Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical

by Sciabarra, Chris

  I have suggested here only a few prospects for the future course of Rand scholarship. In each of these potential areas of study, it is my hope that critically minded scholars will have at their disposal all of Rand’s private papers and journals. For now, it is my hope that this book has contributed to a serious dialogue on the profound importance of Ayn Rand’s intellectual legacy.

  APPENDIX I

  THE RAND TRANSCRIPT (1999)

  For many years, scholars have sought to understand Ayn Rand’s early education in an attempt to identify possible influences on her intellectual development. Regrettably, very little information has been available on one important phase of that education: her studies at the University of Leningrad in the years 1921 to 1924.

  Having recovered Rand’s college transcript, I am now in a position to shed greater light on this subject.1 I have investigated the nature and significance of the courses that it lists, and the orientation of the professors who probably taught those courses. This essay provides a brief discussion of the transcript’s contents and concludes with some reflections on one important pattern that I see in Rand’s studies.

  The official transcript copy is signed by the Director of the Central State Archive of St. Petersburg, T. Z. Zernova (30 October 1998).2 The transcript reports that Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum, born in 1905, entered the university on 2 October 1921 and graduated from the Social Pedagogical Division of the Faculty (or College) of the Social Sciences of Leningrad State University. This three-year course of the obshchestvenno-pedagogicheskoe otdelenie (Department of Social Pedagogy) was part of the new social science curriculum at the university, which had united the existing schools of history, philology, and law. The integration of the historical and philosophical disciplines sought to prepare students for careers as social science educators.

  The transcript confirms all of those facts that I had previously uncovered in the official Rosenbaum dossier, dated 6 August 1992, as part of my research for Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (1995a). It also provides an additional piece of information: that Rosenbaum received her Certificate of Graduation (Diploma No. 1552) on 13 October 1924. Most importantly, it tells us that during her period of study, Rosenbaum passed—or “received credit for” or “fulfilled the requirements of”—twenty-six courses. These are important qualifications, for no grades are recorded therein. Rand’s claim to Barbara Branden (1986, 54) that she had “graduated from the university with the highest honors” remains unconfirmed. In fact, during this period, Rand may have done well on her exams, but academic performance was assessed simply as pass or fail, with a “retake” option for those students who received failing grades (Konecny 1994, 201).

  As I indicate in my Liberty article (Sciabarra 1999b) detailing the relentless search for the Rosenbaum transcript, it was the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) that first discovered the document. When I had been in negotiations with the ARI to secure a copy of the transcript—a negotiation that eventually failed—its officials had noted that the signatures on the transcript were illegible. That fact was confirmed by the university archivists, who were unable to decipher any of the signatures on the document. However, the ARI officials had insisted that they could not detect the signature of Nicholas Onufrievich Lossky. Its presence, they believed, would have confirmed, once and for all, that he was, indeed, one of Rand’s teachers—a question raised by my own work in Russian Radical.

  At the time, neither I nor the ARI officials were aware that the signatures next to each listed course were not necessarily or ordinarily those of the teacher. In most, if not all, cases, the signatures were of the rector, or the vice-rector, or the dean of the social sciences, or the department chair. (During the period in question, the school moved to unite the social sciences and the humanities.3 Prior to 1922, the rector was V. M. Shimkevich, while the dean of the social sciences was N. S. Derzhavin. There were many other officials who would have acted as official signatories on the document.) Given this fact, even legible signatures, analyzed by handwriting experts, would not necessarily yield more information on the specific teacher of each course.

  Nevertheless, a more detailed examination of the university archives might reveal additional information both about the courses offered and the professors who taught them. That investigation awaits the attention of future scholars. At this stage of our inquiry, we can identify the following twenty-six courses, listed chronologically, and taken by Rand between the Fall of 1921 and the Spring of 1924:4

  1. General Theory of the State and the State Structure in the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic) and the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics)5

  This course was a fairly straightforward rendering of the Bolshevik politics of the Soviet Union, presented in proletarian class-conscious, Marxist-Leninist terms. Konecny (1994) informs us that during this period “obligatory courses on topics such as political economy, the history of the Russian Communist Party, and the Soviet Constitution” were introduced into the university (111). These party courses did not become compulsory until 1925. While there were few bona fide communist professors in 1921, the courses were still highly recommended for all students (117).

  2. History of the Development of Social Forms

  This examined the development of human social relations from the perspective of both Marxist and non-Marxist political thinkers. It included a study of social formations—and their effects on the lives of individuals—as they emerged over time. Heavily infused with notions of historical materialism and evolutionary development, the course was probably taught by the Marxist K. M. Takhtarev.

  3. Psychology

  Courses in psychology were actually courses in philosophical psychology, offered by the Department of Philosophy.6 Such coursework focused on the philosophy of mind, and on the nature of introspection, self-observation, and volition.7 The most likely teacher of this course was the celebrated neo-Kantian Ivan Ivanovich Lapshin.8 Like Lossky, Lapshin stressed the importance of mutual immanence in his rejection of solipsism and its “‘false metaphysical dualism between things in themselves and the knowing subject’” (quoted in Zenkovsky 1953, vol. 2, 689). Lapshin had taught this course several times between 1897–98 and 1917–18.9 But as a critic of dialectical materialism, he was eventually exiled in 1922, along with many other intellectuals, including Lossky.

  4. Logic

  This Department of Philosophy course featured all the traditional discussions of the Aristotelian syllogism, deduction, and inductive inference, as well as an examination of typical logical fallacies. From 1889, it was usually taught by the chair of the department, Aleksandr Ivanovich Vvedensky, also a Russian Idealist philosopher and psychologist, and one of the most important representatives of the neo-Kantian movement in Russia. Vvedensky had served as the president of the St. Petersburg Philosophical Society in 1899. He taught the reality and efficacy of free will, and argued that “the function of logic is to verify what is known and not to reveal the unknown” (GSE 1974, vol. 4, 647). Despite his deep disagreements with the Marxists, he remained an active participant in the debates over materialism in the early 1920s, until his death in 1925. He had been a mentor to Lapshin, Askoldov, and Lossky, and was an exceptionally gifted lecturer who attracted thousands of students during his tenure at the university.10

  After 1923, the Marxist Borichevsky taught the course in logic—but his expertise was limited to Spinoza, Epicurus, and materialism. Given that Rand took this course early in her academic career, probably in the fall of 1921, it seems certain that she studied with Vvedensky.11 It is of some interest that this was not the only course on logic that Rand ever took. After graduating Leningrad University, she entered a two-year program at the State Institute for Cinematography in Leningrad as a means of honing her writing craft for the screen. Screenwriting was not offered in the first—and only—year of the program in which Rand enrolled. But she did take courses in art history, stage fencing, biodynamics, film makeup, social studies, dance, cinematography, and logic (Rand
1999, 10).

  5. French Language

  Rand had been exposed to the French language from a very young age, as her mother had insisted, since this would enable her to read many of the classics of modern literature in their original language, including the works of her beloved Victor Hugo. To take this elective was hardly a surprising choice for the young Rand, who probably sought college credit for a language in which she was already fairly proficient.

  6. Historical Materialism

  A formal study of historical materialism was recommended for undergraduates. It was this course that probably led the mature Rand to reject “dialectics”—since the Soviets virtually identified the two concepts. For the Soviet Marxists of the period, dialectics was historical materialism, a study of the primacy of the economic forces in history and their predominating effects on other aspects of the social totality. The course would have examined the so-called “inexorable laws of historical development,” with an emphasis on the resolution of internal contradictions that would propel the world toward the triumph of communism.

  7. History of Worldviews (Ancient Period)

  In her interviews with Barbara Branden (1986), Rand claimed that she had taken “an elective course on the history of ancient philosophy” with the distinguished N. O. Lossky, wherein she studied the pre-Socratics, Plato, and Aristotle (42). In Russian Radical, I argued that the relationship between Rand and Lossky was “of paramount historical importance because it was probably Lossky who introduced Rand to dialectical methods of analysis” (41). But the book raised some doubts about Rand’s claims. Because of these doubts, some critics dismissed my attempts to link Rand and Lossky, even though this dismissal damned the integrity of Rand’s recollections.

  When it first came to my awareness that the Estate of Ayn Rand had secured a copy of the transcript, it was the possibility of a full resolution of the Lossky puzzle that most interested me. In my failed negotiations to secure a copy of the transcript from the estate, the ARI officials claimed that they could not identify any listed courses on the history of ancient philosophy. I had hypothesized originally that such a course might be untraceable, since it may have been offered as an elective through the university’s annex, to which Lossky had been relegated in the 1921–22 academic year. But I was convinced that the ARI’s officials simply did not know what to look for in the transcript. When I finally received an official transcript copy from the Central State Archives, my suspicions were vindicated. The presence of this course—on the “History of Worldviews” or Weltanschauungen in the “Ancient Period”—constitutes further evidence in support of Rand’s memories of this period.

  Moreover, growing evidence since the publication of Russian Radical has lent greater credence to my case for a Lossky-Rand relationship. For instance, I had examined, in that book, Rand’s discussion of the 1917–18 academic year, in which she befriended a classmate, Olga Vladimirovna, sister of the author Vladimir Nabokov. I discovered that the Nabokov sisters, both Olga and Helene, had attended the Stoiunin Gymnasium during the period in question. The gymnasium was founded in 1881 by Maria Nikolaievna Stoiunina and Vladimir Stoiunin, the parents of Lossky’s wife. Lossky actually taught classes in logic and psychology at the school from 1898 to 1922. It is now virtually certain that the young Rand learned of him while she studied at this famous school for young women.

  At the time that I wrote my book, Helene Sikorski, Olga’s surviving sister, did not recall ever having met Ayn Rand. She later asked my forgiveness: “I am now 90 years old,” she said. It was only after the book was published that she “regret[ted] sincerely” the “delay” in her memory (personal correspondence, 3 January 1996). Before writing to me, she had corresponded directly with Boris Lossky, son of Nicholas Onufrievich. The Nabokov family had known the Losskys quite well, and remained in contact even after their departure from Russia in 1919. Boris explained to me that Helene remembered, quite “unexpectedly,” that Alissa Rosenbaum had, indeed, “returned for many visits” to the Nabokov mansion on Morskaya Street in St. Petersburg. Alissa conversed endlessly with Olga; both girls were “enraptured by the February revolution” of 1917. Helene did not quite grasp all the implications of these political subjects, but she remembered them—finally.

  In my book, I give voice to Boris’s own doubts with regard to Rand’s overall recollections. When he ultimately accepted that the young Alissa had been friends with Olga Nabokov, he “wanted to call [my] attention to this fact,” since it was now “clear that the friendship of Rosenbaum and the Nabokov sisters [was] not an invention of Ayn Rand.” These young women had all studied “in the high school of my grandmother Stoiunin,” Boris concluded unequivocally. And by implication, since Rand’s recollections of the Nabokovs were of an even earlier time period than her alleged studies with his father Nicholas, Boris seemed willing to give greater weight to the specific conclusions of my “creative work” on Rand’s college education (personal correspondence, 21 November 1995).

  Helene wrote to me to reinforce Boris’s conclusions. She apologized again that she “did not recall in time that Ayn Rand was a dear friend of my sister Olga” (personal correspondence, 7 February 1996). She emphasized: “I remember A. Rosenbaum very dimly. It was in 1917 (I was just 11 years old). But both she and my sister were very excited and interested concerning the February revolution, which they both approved. But all these meetings ended in October 1917, when our family left St. Petersburg. I must confess that I never knew that this lady became a famous writer” (personal correspondence, 3 January 1996).12

  Given the intimate relationship of the Nabokovs and the Losskys, and Rand’s close friendship with Olga, it is, indeed, extremely likely that Rand learned of Lossky while in attendance at the school founded and operated by his in-laws, and in which he himself taught. That knowledge may have contributed to her selection of Lossky’s course in the Spring semester of her freshman year at Petrograd University.

  The doubts that I raised concerning Rand’s attendance in this specific course centered on two important facts: that Lossky had been removed from “official” university teaching duties prior to his house arrest in August 1922, and his exile in November 1922, and that during the 1921–22 academic year, especially in the Fall semester, he was ill with a gallbladder condition. I speculated that if Lossky taught any college-level courses in the 1921–22 academic year, it would have had to have been offered in the Spring semester—since Lossky’s health improved dramatically in the winter—and it would have been a course taught from the university annex, the Institute for Scientific Research, to which Lossky was reassigned. Indeed, when M. N. Pokrovsky, of Narkompros (the Commissariat of Enlightenment), had barred Lossky from the premises of the university proper, he did not bar him from teaching university courses from the premises of the annex. The record shows that Pokrovsky sought to remove Lossky from the slate of his regular university duties, since Lossky had been engaging in wholesale attacks on the Bolsheviks and the materialists in each of his courses. Konecny (1994) clarifies some of these issues.13 He tells us that Lossky had been quite angry at those boisterous radical students, who, he claimed, “were from another planet” (48). Still, says Konecny, Lossky “argued that despite the ‘revolutionary fanatics’ who constantly corrected him during lectures, he was able to enrich the minds of many young students with the same material he had used for many years” (81).14 Lossky was even able to give adult education lectures at the Petrograd People’s University.15 These programs “were established at most universities in order to give the public an opportunity to attend free lectures by professors on a wide variety of topics” (82 n. 74). So, while Lossky may have been in danger of forever “forfeiting” his “right to teach [his] own material,” due to the demands of “the new Soviet curricula,” he continued to lecture with characteristic conviction (92).16 Hence, though his Spring 1922 activities may have been “untraceable” in the Lossky family “red-book” of his official pedagogical activities, evidence of these activities exis
ts somewhere in the university’s archives. Even Boris Lossky, who organized the family “red-book,” now believes that it is “perfectly possible” that his father taught this specific course on the history of ancient worldviews (interview, 9 January 1999).17

  In previous academic years, Lossky had offered courses on Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Leibniz, the theory of judgment, free will, trans-subjectivity, contemporary epistemology, metaphysics, and logic. He also taught introductory philosophy classes, and lectured on materialism, hylozoism, and vitalism.18 None of his listed Petrograd courses in the family’s records dealt specifically with Plato, Aristotle, or ancient philosophy—the very subjects that Rand said she studied with him.