Valery Senderov was a Soviet dissident, mathematician, teacher, and advocate of human rights known for his struggle against state-sponsored antisemitism.
12 Facts About Valery Senderov
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In 1968, just before completing his doctoral dissertation, Senderov was expelled for the dissemination of "philosophical literature", which was a euphemism for anything that was viewed by the censors as being anti-Soviet.
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Valery Senderov was given the opportunity to complete his degree in 1970.
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In 1982, Valery Senderov was arrested by the KGB for publishing anticommunist articles in Russian-language newspapers printed abroad, in particular the magazine Posev and the newspaper Russkaya Mysl.
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At his trial, Valery Senderov stated that he was a member of anticommunist groups and expressed that he would continue to fight against the Soviet regime even after he was freed from incarceration.
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Valery Senderov was sentenced to 7 years of hard labor and a subsequent probationary exile of an additional 5 years.
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Valery Senderov was sent to a prison camp for political prisoners near Perm, where he spent much of his time in solitary confinement in a cold cell on rationed food for his refusal to comply with the rules of the prison camp.
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Valery Senderov refused to comply to protest the confiscation of his Bible and the prohibition against studying mathematics.
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In 1987, Valery Senderov was released and, in 1988, became the leader of the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists in the Soviet Union, holding the first official press conference in this new role in 1988.
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In 1980, Valery Senderov self-published with Boris Kanevsky a work titled "Intellectual Genocide" about the discrimination by Soviet universities against Jewish applicants.
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Valery Senderov shed light on the various methods used by the university administration to dissuade and reject Jewish applicants.
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In conjunction with publishing this work, Valery Senderov became one of the founders of a set of informal courses of study under the moniker of "Jewish National University", where well-known mathematicians gave lectures to applicants who had been denied admission to Moscow State University for being Jewish.