You Failed Your Math Test, Comrade Einstein

The following sections are included:

• ABOUT THE EDITOR

• FROM THE EDITOR

• CONTENTS

The following sections are included:

• Acknowledgment

• Problems

• Evaluation of the Problems
  • Easy: 15, 24
  • Tricky: 4, 7, 8, 13, 14, 18, 23
  • Challenging and interesting: 3, 9, 11, 20, 22, 25
  • Straightforward and difficult: 1, 2, 5, 6, 17, 21
  • Difficult and uninteresting: 10, 12, 16, 19
  • Inaccurate statement: 5, 7, 9, 14, 19, 22
  • Completely wrong: 18

• Solutions

• Notes

• References

The following sections are included:

• Problems
  • Day 1
  • Day 2

• Solutions
  • Problem 1
  • Problem 2
  • Problem 3
  • Problem 4
  • Problem 5
  • Problem 6

• References

However, the majority of our contemporary academics disguise what is true with what is false and never surpass the limits of scientific fraud and posturing, using the science they have at their command only for vile material interest. And when they meet a man who sincerely searches for the truth, refusing falseness and lies, and rejecting ostentation and fraud, they take him for a fool and ridicule him.

The following sections are included:

• Introduction

• Mekhmat of MGU [Department of Mechanics and Mathematics]
  • Sergei Krichevskii
  • Dmitrii Lavrovskii
  • Alexander Trutnev
    • Oral exam
  • Igor Averbakh
  • Dilyara Vegrina
    • Statement
  • Mikhail Temchin
  • Dmitrii Markhashov
    • Statement
    • Consideration of complaints by appeal committees
  • I. Averbakh
  • D. Vegrina
  • A. Trutnev
  • M. Temchin
    • Non–University Levels

• MIFI and MFTI

Page 5, Problem 1 given to Krichevskii: As often happens in these accounts, everyone overlooked an additional solution, namely x = -2. Apparently, it was assumed that only real numbers could be involved, since the solution x = - 2 gives rise to the complex number . In any case, the fact that the examiners, who were professional mathematicians, did not use this mathematical technicality to trap applicants instead of arguing trivial semantics provides a good insight into their lack of mathematical culture…

Let us turn to the 1970s and more recent years. This was a time of gradual disintegration of the Soviet system. After erroneous hopes of some intelligentsia about liberalization of the regime in the 1950s and 1960s, people came to the understanding (especially after Czechoslovakia^b) that the system was already incapable of change. The authorities made a desperate attempt to preserve the general features of the regime without changing anything essential. State-organized terror in the scientific community manifested itself at all levels of preparation and work of scientists: admission to universities and graduate studies, defense of dissertations, work recruitment, degree and title awarding, travels abroad, and contacts with world science were under the most severe control by the authorities. A new tendency omnipresent at that time was full mutual understanding between the Communist party and personnel-controlling bodies, i. e. KGB.^c A de facto merging of the socalled "public organizations" and Secret Service was completed by the end of the 1960s and 70s. During Stalin's years, if Stalin so desired, he could nominate obviously (or outwardly) nonorthodox but competent specialists to important scientific and organizational positions (up to the President of the Academy of Sciences of USSR). Among such nominees were people who were not members of the Communist party, a practice totally abandoned under Brezhnev's rule. During Brezhnev's years, data from application questionnaires^d became the only criteria. Professional qualities played no role…

For a number of years now, the universities of the former Soviet Union have been free of [Communist] party committees (partkom's). These committees were made up of individuals whose job was to see that the party line was followed, and above all to watch over the purity of the cadres — the loyalty of professors and students, the purity of their curricula vitae, and preferment to the necessary people. Now the offices of party committees have been allotted to computer centers, centers for "intellectual investigations," and so on. Many of their present occupants occupied them in the past, but now they investigate problems of the interaction of science and religion, they criticize Marxism, they invite new-wave politicians and psychics, they talk about their past difficulties at work…

The following sections are included:

• Preliminaries

• Elimination of Undesirable School Graduates

• How Things Were Done: The Procedure

• How It Was Done: "Killer" Problems

• Statistics — The Mekhmat at MGU and Other Institutions

• Mathematical Schools and Olympiads

• General Remarks, History

This article is devoted to a unique page of Soviet history and mathematics; it discusses the "Jewish People's University," a fascinating institution without walls that serves as alma mater for hundreds of today's leading physicists, mathematicians, professors and researchers who, in their youth, were unjustly denied access to traditional Soviet universities. In its short existence in the late '70s and early '80s, "The Jewish People's University" delivered a rich intellectual and emotional stimulus to hundreds of students and their professors, both Jewish and non, who sought to pursue the study of math and physics in an academic, rather than a politically overshadowed, environment…

In the summer of 1980, I received at my home two guests with whom I had not been previously acquainted — Valera Senderov and Borya Kanevsky, both not yet in prison at that time. They came to me to make the arrangements concerning my participation in the endeavor, which proved to be quite successful for the last two years: parallel lecture courses to the MekhMat curriculum for young people who had been unfairly denied admission by the Moscow University Admission Committee. The names "Jewish University," "Jewish People's University," and even the acronym ENU^b appeared later,^c although what is true is true: The majority of the victims of the scoundrels from the examination and the Admission Committee in Moscow University were sinful in the fifth point.^d (Actually, the students selected in 1980, whom I taught, were victims only peripherally: this was the year of the Olympic Games, and the privilege of taking July exams for early admission to the University and MIFF^e was canceled, thereby depriving potential victims of a "safety net" provided by "reserve" institutes where they could apply following the flunking of exams at MekhMat. In the absence of the safety net, they, circumventing the University, sought admission to various institutes of the "kerosinka" type.^f No one wished to risk the possibility of being drafted and sent to Afghanistan…

It was Dmitry Borisovich Fuchs who introduced me to Bella Abramovna Subbotovskya. This apparently occurred during the summer or early autumn of 1980. She proposed that I participate in the work of the "People's University" and I recall that it did not take long for me to consent. The risk of participating was apparent (even for me, in my youthful thoughtlessness at that time); hence, the quick decision was not so trivial. I had two reasons: an immediate sense of "rightness" of the whole endeavor and that absolute feeling of trust which I felt towards Bella Abramovna, something that never left me during the course of our acquaintance and contact (which unfortunately was not very long)…

It somehow worked out that, while I lived together with Bella for ten years and then remained in close contact with her for another twelve years after the divorce, we had no opportunity to tell one another about our childhood and days of youth. This is a major oversight that limits my description of Bella as a person, who was the soul of the People's University. However, there is one detail of her childhood I can relate. Beginning with first grade, but perhaps even earlier, Bella had fallen in love with mathematics. She read any book on mathematics that fell into her hands and solved all mathematical problems and exercises in her textbooks. Just imagine Berezanskii's exercise book for 5th Grade — a huge text containing several thousand problems. Bella received this book in September and in October she had a pile of notebooks filled with solutions to all of the exercises found in the text…