As a counter point, I came to the United States in 1996 -- my dad and brother had H1-B visas and my mother and I had H4 visas. These are all non-immigrant issues, much less non-refugee. We have since obtained green cards and naturalized. My grandparents resisted coming to the United States until few years ago (when my grandmother passed away and we had to bring my grandfather over so that our family could take care of him) and warned me against talking to any "refugees" when I would come to the US.
I'll mention my grandparents perspective as it's not well known in the US but describes many Russian Jews accurately: essentially, they were culturally Jewish, but strongly secular. While they supported Israel the country (as they saw it as more civilized than its neighbors), they rejected the Hebrew language (preferring Yiddish) and the concept of Zionism (they rejected it as a form of nationalism, which they opposed having witnessed it Ukraine and Baltics).
Yet our own family's stories of anti-Semitism are very similar to those the "refugee" families we later befriended (contrary to my grandparents' advice) told us. It turned all out of them were just as secular (you can have our salo when you pry it from our cold dead hands...) as us, so it can't be ascribed to general anti-religious discrimination that happened during the Soviet times.
Keep in mind that today Jewish population in Russia is minuscule and -- due to greater openness and multi-way competition (between Israel, United States, Western Europe, etc...) for intelligentsia -- anti-Semitism in academia has gone down a great deal. I don't think that you can use the experiences of your Jewish family in today's Russia (which is effectively a different country even when compared against Russia of 1996) to come to any conclusions about anti-Semitism during the Soviet days.
I'll mention my grandparents perspective as it's not well known in the US but describes many Russian Jews accurately: essentially, they were culturally Jewish, but strongly secular. While they supported Israel the country (as they saw it as more civilized than its neighbors), they rejected the Hebrew language (preferring Yiddish) and the concept of Zionism (they rejected it as a form of nationalism, which they opposed having witnessed it Ukraine and Baltics).
Yet our own family's stories of anti-Semitism are very similar to those the "refugee" families we later befriended (contrary to my grandparents' advice) told us. It turned all out of them were just as secular (you can have our salo when you pry it from our cold dead hands...) as us, so it can't be ascribed to general anti-religious discrimination that happened during the Soviet times.
Keep in mind that today Jewish population in Russia is minuscule and -- due to greater openness and multi-way competition (between Israel, United States, Western Europe, etc...) for intelligentsia -- anti-Semitism in academia has gone down a great deal. I don't think that you can use the experiences of your Jewish family in today's Russia (which is effectively a different country even when compared against Russia of 1996) to come to any conclusions about anti-Semitism during the Soviet days.