Kanevskii & Senderov's 1979 data show a large Mekh-mat admission-rate gap between non-Jewish-lineage and Jewish-lineage applicants despite comparable or better olympiad performance by the latter
B.I. Kanevskii and V.A. Senderov compiled, in 1979, exam and admission outcomes for graduates of six named Moscow mathematical schools, split into a "First group" (47 students with no Jewish parent or grandparent) and a "Second group" (40 students with at least one Jewish parent or grandparent). A. Shen reproduces their table in his 1994 Mathematical Intelligencer account: for Mekh-mat, the Second group won more total olympiad prizes (48 vs. 26) and had more multiple olympiad winners (11 vs. 4) than the First group, yet the Second group's admission rate was 6 of 40 (15%) against the First group's 40 of 47 (85%). Shen presents comparably lopsided admission figures, from the same Kanevskii–Senderov compilation, for two other institutions: MIFI (26/54 vs. 3/29) and MFTI (39/53 vs. 4/32). The pattern — stronger measured performance paired with a far lower admission rate for the same group — is offered as quantitative corroboration of the deliberate-exclusion mechanism described in claim-mekh-mat-coffin-problems-used-to-fail-jewish-applicants.
The figures themselves originate in Kanevskii and Senderov's own 1979–80 compilation, not in Shen's article; Shen's role here is transmission, not independent verification of the underlying count. That original document — an underground samizdat report, not a refereed publication — has not been independently located or read.
source: A. Shen, "Entrance Examinations to the Mekh-mat," The Mathematical Intelligencer 16, no. 4 (1994), pp. 6–10. https://www.lirmm.fr/~ashen/springer-published/1994-4-entrance-exams.pdf (sha256 8062e48587fef843a8904504671fd96a8838ed03b618bb4434e4c80d98ed3e0a).
Correction history.
- 2026-08-21 — the
audit_statusabove and the underground-document reference identified the source as "Intellectual Genocide: examinations for Jews at MGU, MFTI and MIFI" (Moscow, Samizdat, 1980). That document has now been located and read directly, and it does not contain a Mekh-mat table — it states explicitly that no Mekh-mat statistics were compiled in 1980, and supplies group tables only for MIFI and MFTI. The 47-vs-40 Mekh-mat figures likely originate instead in a different, still-unlocated 1979 document (Moscow Helsinki Monitoring Group Document No. 112). See claim-mekh-mat-47-vs-40-table-not-in-intellectual-genocide-1980-origin-likely-document-112 for the full finding and 10-inbox/raw/2026-08-21-can-bi-kanevskii-va-senderovs-1980-samizdat-report.md for the capture that found it. The figure itself is not contradicted — MFTI and MIFI, the two tables "Intellectual Genocide" does contain, both check out against Shen's reproduction — only the citation naming which document the Mekh-mat table came from was wrong. The[unverified-quant]flag stands, now pointed at the corrected document: question-locate-1979-moscow-helsinki-group-document-112 supersedes question-locate-kanevskii-senderov-1980-samizdat-original as the live verification thread.