Ayn Rand and the World She Made

by Anne C. Heller

  Rand’s parents, who: Anna and Zinovy Rosenbaum were married on April 20 (May 3, new calendar), 1904, in the St. Petersburg Choral Synagogue; synagogue register of marriages of merchants, Central State Historic Archive of St. Petersburg, file 386, fond 422, inventory 3.

  “The Russian Revolution has begun”: A People’s Tragedy, p. 179.

  Jews were ready-made scapegoats: A People’s Tragedy, pp. 80-81.

  this period brought the worst anti-Semitic violence: Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: Harper Perennial, 1987, 1988), pp. 364-65.

  The czar’s police: A People’s Tragedy, p. 197.

  By 1914, the statutes circumscribing Jewish activities: History of the Jews, pp. 359-60.

  made up no more than 2 percent of the city’s population: In 1910, 35,000 registered Jews lived in St. Petersburg (Solomon Volkov, St. Petersburg: A Cultural History [New York: The Free Press, 1995], p. 183).

  subject to police searches at all times: Mikhail Beizer, The Jews of St. Petersburg (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1989), pp. 6-8; Stacy Schiff, Vera: Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov (New York: Random House, 1999), pp. 20-21.

  one of the professions: Jews of St. Petersburg, p. 61.

  her sister Natasha: Natasha was 5 also known as Natalia, which is the way she is listed in the archives of the Crimean school both she and AR attended from 1918–21.

  faced Znamenskaya Square: This is now called Vosstaniya Square (Jeff Britting, Ayn Rand: [New York: The Overlook Press, 2004], p. 3).

  named Isaac Guzarchik: Scott McConnell, “Recollections of Ayn Rand I,” speech delivered at the Oslo Objectivist Conference, Oslo, October 18, 2003; Scott McConnell, 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand (Irvine, Calif.: ARI Press), in-5 terviews with AR’s sister NR in 1997 and 1998 (NR died in 1999), 5 pp. 13–14.

  There the family lived: McConnell, “Recollections of Ayn Rand I,” based on interviews with AR’s sister NR. 5

  unreasonably treated in such 5 matters: Michael S. Berliner, “Ayn Rand in Russia,” lecture at the Lyceum International, Brussels, Belgium, 1997.

  “a tyrant”: 100 Voices, NR, p. 11. 6

  Why won’t they let me have what I want?: Harry Binswanger, “AR’s Life: Highlights and Sidelights,” taped speech delivered at the Thomas Jefferson School, San Francisco, 1993; Barbara Branden, “Holding Court,” rebirthofreason.com, July 2005.

  thought that she had been three: Binswanger reports this incident as having occurred when AR was three, but according to the All St. Petersburg Directory, 1907–11, the Rosenbaums moved from Zalbalkanskii Prospekt to Nevsky Prospekt in the fall of 1909 or the winter of 1910, when AR would have been approaching her fifth birthday (Binswanger, “Ayn Rand’s Life”).

  recalled sitting at a window: AR seems to have believed that she was two and a half at the time of this incident, but, again, she appears to have been older. The streetcar line opened on Nevsky Prospekt in September 1907, and the Rosenbaums moved to Nevsky only in late 1909 or early 1910, when AR was close to age five, according to the All St. Petersburg Directory. AR may have been remembering a visit she and her father paid to friends or relatives on Nevsky Prospekt (“Ayn Rand’s Life;” “Holding Court”).

  explaining the way the streetcars worked: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  became the co-owner of Klinge’s pharmacy: The Directory of the St. Petersburg Merchant Administration, 1906–11, 1916, St. Petersburg.

  bought the deed: AR, p. 3.

  Anna hired a cook: Barbara Branden, The Passion of Ayn Rand (New York: Doubleday, 1986), p. 4.

  took music and drawing lessons: AR, p. 4.

  whom … she called by the Russian variant: “Ayn Rand in Russia.”

  capricious, nagging: “Ayn Rand’s Life;” Dina Schein, “Ayn Rand’s Home Atmosphere: Her Family in Russia,” a lecture based on letters to AR from the Rosenbaums, 1926–35, July 9, 2005, ARI Centennial Conference, Santa Barbara, California.

  considered her eldest daughter to be “difficult”: “Holding Court.”

  “Make motions, Alice, make motions!”: Author interview with NB, May 5, 2004.

  exasperated by her penchant for becoming violently enthusiastic: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  “Every man is an architect of his own fortune”: “Ayn Rand in Russia.”

  named the family cats after American states and cities: One cat was named Los Angeles, possibly by AR, and another was called Missouri (“Home Atmosphere”).

  Anna came from a more privileged background: I was unable to find a full record of Anna’s birth, in 1880, but Anna’s older brother Josel (also known as Jakov) was born in St. Petersburg in 1877, three years before Anna’s birth, and attended the tenth St. Petersburg Secondary School (All St. Petersburg Directory, 1900-04). He went on to Kharkov University, in the Ukraine, to study medicine, and returned to St. Petersburg in about 1900, where he opened a business selling ready-made dresses. His birth in St. Petersburg suggests that Anna was also born there.

  owned a factory: Information about AR’s maternal grandfather has been taken from the archives of the All St. Petersburg Directory for the years 1902-6. FB, AR’s second cousin, and other relatives of AR’s mother living in Chicago at the time she arrived there believed that Berko Kaplan was a boot maker, as reported in Barbara Branden, The Passion of Ayn Rand (New York: Doubleday, 1986).

  extended family also lived nearby: All St. Petersburg Directory, 1900, 1904. Interestingly, one of Anna’s brothers, Josel Kaplan, lived at number 17 Zagorodnyi Prospekt, the street on which Osip Mandelstam, the great Russian Jewish poet, grew up at number 70. Mandelstam was fourteen years older than AR, but the two could easily have known each other, especially since AR’s father also lived on Zagorodnyi Prospekt—at number 12—in 1904, before he and Anna were married. As it happened, the oldest and most active Russian Jewish educational organization of the time, called the Society for the Spread of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia, occupied number 23 Zagorodnyi Prospekt during the period under discussion (Jews of St. Petersburg, pp. 126, 128-9).

  at least a few of Zinovy’s eight brothers and sisters: AR, p. 3.

  read and spoke English, French, and German: Robert Mayhew, ed., Essays on Ayn Rand’s “We the Living” (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2004), p. 58.

  taught Rand and Natasha to read and write in French: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  an aspiring member of the St. Petersburg intelligentsia: EOWTL, p. 58.

  Rand read and was strongly influenced by: TPOAR, p. 11.

  focused on her refusal to play with other children: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  never wanted children: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  broke the leg of a doll that Rand was fond of: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  had given everything to an orphanage: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  developed a keen sense that anything she liked had to be hers: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  the perverse and complicated character of Dominique: Some of AR’s memories of her childhood thoughts and attitudes may have been colored by her later reading of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil. Passages she underlined as a young adult in her copies of these books, now owned by the ARI, echo both her characterization of Dominique Francon and her recollections of her childhood. For example, from Beyond Good and Evil (Modern Library edition, 1917, pp. 47–48), she marked the following: “‘Good’ is no longer good when one’s neighbor takes it into his mouth” (Robert Mayhew, ed., Essays on Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” [Lanham, Md., Lexington Books, 2007], p. 25).

  construct a universe of moral principles: According to JMB, an artist, “Fitting in became something Ayn didn’t do, because she couldn’t.” Dr. Blumenthal, a psychiatrist, added, “So she became a superior human being. … If you can’t do small talk, you create a philosophical system which makes small talk stupid, or immoral.” This theme is explored in later chapters. Author interview with Joan and Dr. Allan Blumenthal, who knew AR intimately from 1951 until 1977,
March 23, 2004.

  a certain kind of turn-of-the-century music: Yaron Brook, “Ayn Rand’s Musical Biography,” a speech given at the AR Centenary Conference, New York, April 23, 2005.

  one of the first in St. Petersburg: “Ayn Rand in Russia.”

  She would pick out songs: “Ayn Rand in Russia.”

  buying Rand a chest of drawers: Jeff Britting, “An Illustrated Life,” speech given at the Ayn Rand Centenary Conference, New York, April 23, 2005.

  known to the family as Z.Z.: “Ayn Rand in Russia.”

  “thick hair, powerful body”: Ayn Rand, We the Living (New York: Signet, 1995), p. 34.

  for the most part, silent: “Ayn Rand in Russia.”

  proud of his accomplishments as a self-made businessman: “Ayn Rand in Russia.”

  An avid reader of Russian literature: EOWTL, p. 56.

  wanted to be a writer, too: “Ayn Rand’s Home Atmosphere.”

  from the University of Warsaw in 1899: Directories of the universities of Derpt (Yuriev), Vilno, and Warsaw, for the academic years 1887–99.

  popular with the Jewish residents: Author correspondence with Blitz research service.

  an opening in that department for a Jew: TPOAR, p. 4.

  begin his course of study until age twenty-seven: Or age twenty-nine, depending on whether you go by the record of his marriage (St. Petersburg Choral Synagogue, synagogue register of marriages of merchants, Central State Historic Archive of St. Petersburg, file 386, fond 422, inventory 3) or the ARI’s records.

  helped all but one of his eight brothers and sisters: TPOAR, p. 4.

  how his parents earned their living: I could not discover the birthplace or professions of Zinovy Rosenbaum’s parents, but these may be known to the archivists at the ARI, which controls access to AR’s papers and declined to make them available to me. Information about Zinovy’s uncle and cousins comes from the Russian Medical List and the St. Petersburg Merchant Administration Directory for the years 1905–1916.

  later a strict atheist: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  believed in God: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  experimenting with the idea of God: “Ayn Rand’s Life;” “An Illustrated Life.”

  her parents tried to protect her: Forbidding her to read newspapers, for example (TPOAR, p. 16).

  an impassioned defense of gifted, productive Jews: Jeffrey Walker, Go Ask Alyssa, an unpublished book-length study of AR, Judaism, and Nietzsche, courtesy of author.

  she must have been frighteningly intelligent: Author interview with Robert Bidinotto, Vancouver, July 9, 2004.

  little interest to anyone: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  family “shrugged impatiently”: WTL, p. 47.

  the same was true of her classmates: TPOAR, p. 17.

  sure that such social awkwardness: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  thought Nora was like her: TPOAR, p. 31.

  “shadow and yes-man”: 100 Voices, NR, p. 13.

  It presented Catherine: This is the account AR gave fifty years later. AR had an unusually good memory, so her version may have been the way the story was written for the children of the time, but if so, it was historically inaccurate. In reality, Catherine was a German princess who came to St. Petersburg to marry Peter III, the grandson of Peter the Great. After his death, she ruled Russia for thirty-four years, bringing Western ideas and methods to a still largely Asiatic empire. In the 1790s, she also created the infamous Pale of Settlement through usurpation and partitioning of lands that had belonged to Poland.

  “something between a misfit and an ugly duckling”: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  meant for an exceptional fate: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  according to Bill Bucko’s translation: The Mysterious Valley has been translated from French and re-published in the United States in book form as The Mysterious Valley, Bill Bucko, trans., introduction by Harry Binswanger (Lafayette, Co.: The Atlantean Press, 1994).

  “my present kind of hero”: Introduction to The Mysterious Valley, p. xiii.

  All things British: Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 76.

  never forgot this girl, whose name was Daisy: This was Daisy Gerhardie, sister of British novelist William Gerhardie. Interestingly, when speaking about Daisy and another equally tall, slender, blue-eyed girl she had glimpsed the year before, she called them “symbols. I admired them from afar as though with a movie-star infatuation.” What’s interesting here is that her infatuation was theatrical; since she couldn’t hope to emulate or become these long-legged girls, she could only fantasize about them. She went on to say, “Those were the first value steps in my development;” in both cases, they were steps away from being Russian and Jewish (“Ayn Rand’s Life”).

  “ideal country”: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  describe reason: Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism (New York: Signet, 1964), p. 28.

  He was her “exclusive love”: The Mysterious Valley, p. xiii.

  something that none of them could see or share: The Mysterious Valley, p. xiii.

  her feeling for Cyrus was of “unbearable intensity”: The Mysterious Valley, p. xiii.

  conducting official business before he headed off to Sarajevo: Frederic Morton, Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989).

  moved on to Switzerland and Paris: TPOAR, p. 14.

  Rand found a rare playmate: TPOAR, p. 14.

  what she had always thought existence would be like: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  she decided to become a writer: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  sailed on a packed ship: AR, p. 9.

  “The war marked the end of the world”: TPOAR, p. 14.

  mistakenly believing that St. Petersburg was a Germanic name: Arthur L. and Elena George, St. Petersburg: Russia’s Window to the Future (Oxford, UK: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003), p. 409.

  began a classical course of study: AR is listed as one of thirty-nine second-year students at Stoiunin in the Central Historic Archive of St. Petersburg. Individual students’ records were not preserved, but a list of students, their teachers, and the courses they taught were. (Fond 148, file 420, inventory 1, pp. 1–2.)

  Founded in 1889: Dostoevsky File, fond 100, Manuscript Department of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House), St. Petersburg.

  The school had an extraordinary faculty: Chris Matthew Sciabarra, The Russian Radical (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), pp. 41–42.

  sidestepped official quotas on Jewish students: Jews were limited to at most 10 percent of places in Russian grammar schools, even in towns made up mostly of Jews. In general, education involved “ceaseless chicanery, deception, and humiliation” for the Jewish population of Russia (Chaim Weitzman, quoted in A History of the Jews, pp. 424–25).

  Almost a third of Rand’s second-year class: Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years, p. 101. AR, the Nabokov family, and the Stoiunins and Losskys cross paths in many different ways, as I describe later in this chapter.

  student there from 1914 until 1918: Until recently, AR’s attendance at Stoiunin was unproved; Sciabarra found incontrovertible evidence of it, and so did my researchers at Blitz research services. Blitz obtained and searched the school archives, which revealed all the facts contained here. A collection of documents from the Stoiunin school exists in St. Petersburg’s Central Historic Archive, fond 148, including class lists and lists of teachers from the 1880s on. (Chris Matthew Sciabarra, “The Ayn Rand Transcript,” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Fall 1999 [vol. 1, no. 1], pp. 1–26.)

  studied French and German: Unfortunately, the academic files of AR and other students have not been preserved.

  Jewish girls had to attend: the Central Historic Archive of St. Petersburg (fond 148) and the Manuscript Department of the Russian National Library.

  “revoltingly dark”: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  Russian Orthodox prayer: Th
e late George Walsh, a former professor of philosophy at Salisbury State University, related this personal anecdote to Dr. Sciabarra. (Author interview with Chris Matthew Sciabarra, November 13, 2003.)

  “Any man [who has] a serious central ambition”: Ayn Rand, The Art of Fiction (New York: Plume Books, 2000), p. 61.

  “a tremendous sense of intellectual power”: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  The teacher asked the class: “An Illustrated Life.”

  to play boring games and read silly books: Later, AR would also decry both Descartes and Pascal (“An Illustrated Life”).

  known as “the brain”: TPOAR, p. 32.

  a ridiculous thing to say: Nathaniel Branden and Barbara Branden, Who Is Ayn Rand? (New York: Random House, 1962), p. 160.

  “the first most important event”: TPOAR, p. 26.

  writing novels at home and in school: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  Russian military losses: St. Petersburg: Russia’s Window, p. 411.

  “stood alone against everyone”: NB speculates that AR learned of Joan of Arc through reading Friedrich Schiller’s play The Maid of Orleans (author interview with NB, August 10, 2004). It is the part of Joan in this play that Vesta Dunning is rehearsing when Howard Roark first meets her in an excised section of TF (Ayn Rand, The Early Ayn Rand: A Selection of Her Unpublished Fiction, Leonard Peikoff, ed. [New York: Signet, 2005], p. 441). According to another former friend, the philosophy professor and 1972 Libertarian Party presidential candidate JH, Schiller was AR’s favorite playwright (John Hospers, “Conversations with Ayn Rand,” Liberty, July 1990, p. 25).

  didn’t expect to publish anything: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  “You [always] planned to be greater than Columbus”: “Ayn Rand in Russia.”

  hated the stocky shape of her developing body: AR, p. 11.

  was again desperately lonely: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”

  TWO: LOOTERS: 1917–1925

  “There is a fundamental conviction”: Ayn Rand, “Inexplicable Personal Alchemy,” The Objectivist, January 1969, bound volume, p. 579.

  “faithful to the truth”: Meryle Secrest, Frank Lloyd Wright (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 375.