To the person who replied, saying "some engineering paths were barred". I have not negated the facts, just tried to put them in true perspective, which I think is lacking in your response.
You said that my claim is false. I'm not sure what true perspective you are referring to that could show that. The situation was far more severe than just "quotas at top universities". That the Stalin years ended in a campaign of barely disguised antisemitism is also just fact.
Again, cannot reply directly. What I said was false, is saying, or suggesting, that what happened to the jews in Soviet Union was like what happened to the jews in nazi Germany. It was not.
By this I am not negating not Stalin repressions, not the "Doctors affair", not the fact that many gifted people could not realize their potential in a way they could have had otherwise.
If you open the comment separately as its own page, it should allow you to reply there.
Not trying to claim that they're the same at all, especially not in a physical sense. Maybe in a spiritual or cultural sense the consequences could be compared, and maybe Stalin was planning something more (we'll never know). The goals were completely different. As I mentioned somewhere else, the full scope of the Nazis goals were so much worse than most people know.
The only claim here is that Soviets did not have racial laws at all - they essentially did.
Ok, they "essentially had racial laws", with Gelfand and Landau being godlike in the Soviet science, Kantorovich having his prizes, not speaking of the jews with the title of "Hero of Soviet Union". Not speaking of people who founded the Israeli science (together with jews from other European countrues). Where did they go to university? In some parallel world?
This is not to negate the facts, but to put things in perspective.
I don't know why the topic of Soviet universities specifically is so touchy, out of everything else. Notice a detail I mentioned earlier - "Jewish person of ordinary means". As with most things in the Soviet Union, bribes, or even just who you know, can make problems go away. But not every family had the sort of means or connections.
Before you compare to American tuition - I'm not talking about the top universities. I'm talking about effectively being completely barred from an entire career path, despite having the talent for it.