Selected text
After school I decided to enter the Electrical Engineering Institute named after V. I. Ulyanov-Lenin [LETI]. It was in 1951. The Soviet propaganda was conducting a battle against ‘bowing to the West,’ trying to establish the ‘priority’ of Russia and the USSR in all sciences. The teachers warned entrants during consultations, ‘Do not say ‘Voltaic arc’ by any means, it was renamed into ‘Petrov’s arc.’ They repeated that endlessly. I got a question about that arc at the examination. I called it ‘Voltaic arc,’ as if hypnotized, and got a ‘satisfactory’ mark. All in all, I got a lot of ‘satisfactory’ marks in the entrance exams, which was absolutely undeserved, in my opinion.
They simply didn’t want to admit me to this prestigious Institute. Stalin was still alive. There existed a secret, though strict entrance rate for Jews at the Institutes. Jews were not accepted to the best Institutes, especially to the University, at all. The same happened with acceptance to work. There was a popular joke about a personnel department manager, who said, ‘Those Jews, who study at Institutes or work, are our Soviet Jews; but those Jews, who try to find a job or enter an Institute, are Yids.’ In reality, it was not a joke, but a principle of personnel policy of that time.
Anti-Semitism was very strong after the war [16]. It didn’t really have an impact on our family, but it was impossible not to notice it being displayed.
They simply didn’t want to admit me to this prestigious Institute. Stalin was still alive. There existed a secret, though strict entrance rate for Jews at the Institutes. Jews were not accepted to the best Institutes, especially to the University, at all. The same happened with acceptance to work. There was a popular joke about a personnel department manager, who said, ‘Those Jews, who study at Institutes or work, are our Soviet Jews; but those Jews, who try to find a job or enter an Institute, are Yids.’ In reality, it was not a joke, but a principle of personnel policy of that time.
Anti-Semitism was very strong after the war [16]. It didn’t really have an impact on our family, but it was impossible not to notice it being displayed.
Period
Year
1951
Location
St. Petersburg
Russia
Interview
Margarita Farka