--- title: "Can B.I. Kanevskii & V.A. Senderov's 1980 samizdat report 'Intellectual Genocide' be located and read directly, to verify the Mekh-mat/MIFI/MFTI admission-rate figures Shen reproduces?" type: "question" status: "open" date_raised: "2026-08-20T00:00:00.000Z" writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5" tags: ["history-of-mathematics","soviet-union","antisemitism","academia","mekh-mat","verification"] --- [[claim-kanevskii-senderov-1979-data-shows-mekh-mat-admission-gap-despite-jewish-applicants-olympiad-edge]] rests on a set of admission-rate figures — 6/40 (15%) vs. 40/47 (85%) at Mekh-mat, plus comparable figures at MIFI and MFTI — reproduced by [[entity-a-shen|A. Shen]] in his 1994 *Mathematical Intelligencer* article from B.I. Kanevskii and V.A. Senderov's 1979–80 statistical compilation, "Intellectual Genocide: examinations for Jews at MGU, MFTI and MIFI" (Moscow, Samizdat, 1980). Shen's own article is Tier 1 and was read directly this session, but the underlying document he is reproducing is an unrefereed, self-published underground report that has never itself been located or read in this vault. The sourcing floor wants a quantitative claim like this one at Tier 1–2 against its own original, not against a secondhand reproduction, however trustworthy the reproducer. **Why it matters.** This is the single quantitative anchor for the "discrimination was real and large, not anecdotal" reading of the Mekh-mat coffin-problems mechanism ([[claim-mekh-mat-coffin-problems-used-to-fail-jewish-applicants]]). If the original document cannot be found, the figure should stay flagged indefinitely rather than have its flag quietly forgotten. **What would answer it:** 1. Search for the original 1980 samizdat text, or a scan/reprint of it — candidate leads include M. Shifman's edited collection *You Failed Your Math Test, Comrade Einstein* (World Scientific, 2005), which reprints adjacent material from the same episode, and any digitized samizdat archive. 2. If located, check the exact wording and any caveats Kanevskii and Senderov themselves attached to their methodology (school selection, how "Jewish lineage" was determined, whether the sample of six schools is representative). 3. If genuinely unrecoverable, note that explicitly rather than leaving the question silently open — an underground 1980 document may simply not survive in fetchable form, which is itself worth recording. **Progress, 2026-08-21.** Partially answered — leaving open rather than closing. "Intellectual Genocide" itself *was* located and read directly: [[claim-intellectual-genocide-1980-report-located-as-2005-reconstructed-translation]] covers how (Shifman's 2005 reconstructed translation, from three incomplete archival photocopies; Russian original still unpublished). Reading it answered two of the three figures this question named — the MFTI table matches Shen's reproduction exactly ([[claim-intellectual-genocide-mfti-figures-match-shen-1994-exactly]]), and the MIFI discrepancy resolves in the primary document's own favor via its own internal arithmetic ([[claim-intellectual-genocide-mifi-admitted-count-discrepancy-with-shen-1994]]). But the single most load-bearing figure — the Mekh-mat 47-vs-40 table — is **not** in "Intellectual Genocide" at all ([[claim-mekh-mat-47-vs-40-table-not-in-intellectual-genocide-1980-origin-likely-document-112]]). Its likelier home is a different, still-unlocated 1979 document. That narrower, sharper verification is now tracked separately at [[question-locate-1979-moscow-helsinki-group-document-112]]. This question stays open on the narrow technicality that "the Mekh-mat data was obtained in 1979" was always part of what it asked, and that part remains unresolved — but most of its practical work is now done by its successor question.