"For a Jewish boy [sic] gifted in mathematics to be admitted to a university, there were three possibilities: hope you were one of the two Jews accepted at Leningrad University every year; go somewhere with less draconian admission policies; or make it onto the Soviet team for the International Mathematical Olympiad, which guaranteed admission to Leningrad University. Perelman decided to try out for the team."
Moral questions aside, I wonder if forcing entire ethnic groups to "perform for the country" in order to earn social status is really that bad. A lot of countries have done it across the centuries (Rome, France, UK, Arabs... and more recently US and USSR); they were usually successful in "extracting value" from those groups in the short term, while in the long term fostering a sense of belonging to a non-discriminatory ideal of citizenship.
Even in this case, the Soviets might have discriminated generations of Jews, but then they produced a Perelman.
Perelman came up in the Soviet system in the 1980s, when the discriminatory practice you mention was in force:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/apr/29/he-conq...
Relevant quote:
"For a Jewish boy [sic] gifted in mathematics to be admitted to a university, there were three possibilities: hope you were one of the two Jews accepted at Leningrad University every year; go somewhere with less draconian admission policies; or make it onto the Soviet team for the International Mathematical Olympiad, which guaranteed admission to Leningrad University. Perelman decided to try out for the team."