Noted Soviet Mathematician Granted an Exit Visa

Prof. Grigory Freiman, who revealed details of discrimination against Jews in the Soviet mathematics establishment, has been given permission to emigrate with his family, the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry reported today.

Freiman first applied for an exit visa in 1980 and was refused without any reason. A respected mathematics professor at the University of Kalinin, Freiman was dismissed from his post following the publication of his “samizdat” essay charging that a group of prominent anti-Semitic mathematicians had effectively eliminated Soviet Jews from the field.

Freiman had come under intense pressure from the authorities recently. Last month he was summoned by the KGB in connection with the arrest of two Soviet Jewish mathematicians, Boris Kanevsky and Valery Senderov, who had accumulated statistics on anti-Semitism in Soviet academic institutions.

While Jews have made great contributions to Soviet mathematics in the past, Freiman, along with Kanevsky and Senderov, reported that Soviet universities administer exceptionally difficult admission exams to Jews and reject almost all Jewish applicants. Soviet authorities refuse to grant degrees for dissertations by Jews and editors of some Soviet mathematical journals will not publish research papers by Jews.