Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical

by Sciabarra, Chris

  32. Reviewing Blanshard’s Reason and Analysis in The Objectivist Newsletter, Nathaniel Branden praises Blanshard’s critique of logical positivism and linguistic analysis. Though he criticizes Blanshard’s Idealist theory of universal, he views the book as “brilliant” and “powerful.” N. Branden (February 1963), “Books,” in Objectivist Newsletter 2:7–8. Blanshard is also praised by Peikoff (1988bT; 1970T, Lectures 7 and 9). These appraisals reflect Rand’s own views since everything that was published in Objectivist publications, or presented in Objectivist courses, was approved by Rand.

  33. Rorty 1967, 125. The issue is complicated further when we assess not merely an entity’s relational properties but its relations with other entities. Internalists might say that entities which appear separate and distinct are actually defined by their relations to everything else in the universe. This view of the entity as a cluster of relations blurs the line between the object and the subject; even the table-as-observed-by-me is part of the definition of the table, that is, a feature in the absence of which it would no longer be called a table. For this observation, thanks to Hospers (17 July 1993C). To discuss the vast implications of the internalist-externalist dispute would take me well beyond the scope of this book. See also note 35 to this chapter.

  34. In his essay “Historical materialism” (in Mepham and Ruben 1979), Geoffrey Hellman suggests that strict organicity applied to social critique generates a problem of individuation. In a strict organicist perspective, “social systems are so thoroughly interdependent that independently varying variables are not isolable in principle” (161).

  35. It is the relation between seemingly separable things within a broader totality that constitutes a central question in the internalist-externalist dispute. Kline (18 August 1993C; 1983) explains that most relations are two-term, but some are three-term. A three-term relation is expressed in the statement: “Philadelphia is between New York and Washington.” A two-term relation is expressed in a temporal context, as in the relationship between presently living Person A and his long-dead great-grandfather. Kline stresses that the relationship between Person A and his great-grandfather is not symmetrical or reciprocal. The relationship is internal (or “constitutive”) with respect to Person A, and external (or “non-constitutive”) with respect to the great-grandfather. That the great-grandfather “was who he was and led the life he led makes a difference to” Person A, but who Person A is and what life he has led “makes/made no difference” to the great-grandfather. Thus, “In general, if a relation is internal (‘constitutive’) with respect to one relatum, it is external (‘non-constitutive’) with respect to the other.” By contrast Rand viewed internal relations as asymmetric, rather than purely symmetrical.

  36. Copleston 1966, 446. Copleston argues that this kind of pure externality is implied in Russell’s logical atomism. Peikoff (1970T, Lecture 8) agrees that Russell sees reality as a collection of disparate, disconnected facts.

  37. Aristotle, De Poetica (Poetics) 8.30–35, in Aristotle 1941, 1463.

  CHAPTER 3. EDUCATING ALISSA

  1. Rand (June 1982), “To the readers of The Fountainhead,” in Binswanger 3.3.4. This letter, written in 1945, was a “general response letter mailed by Bobbs-Merrill or the author in answer to reader enquiries.” See Perinn (1990): 69.

  2. Kline (18 August 1993C) asks if Rand’s reference to the “content of a person’s brain” is indicative of reductionist materialism. Rand probably made a category mistake; she means the contents of a person’s “mind.” I demonstrate later that Rand is neither a vulgar materialist nor a vulgar idealist.

  3. B. Branden, “Who is Ayn Rand?” in Branden and Branden 1962, 164.

  4. Rand, “About the author,” in Rand [1957] 1992, 1170–71. Rand [1957] 1992 is hereafter cited as Atlas Shrugged by page number in text and notes.

  5. Unless otherwise indicated, biographical information in this chapter is derived from Barbara Branden’s previously cited essay, “Who is Ayn Rand?”; The Passion of Ayn Rand (1986), especially the first five chapters; and interviews and correspondence with Branden herself.

  6. Rand 1979bT. Rand recollected that she would read a textbook once and comprehend the entire course.

  7. It is common to refer to both February and March of 1917 as the time of the food riots. After their seizure of power, the Bolsheviks changed the calendar from the “old style” to the “new style.” Prior to this change, Russia was thirteen days behind the new calendar. For this observation, thanks to Rosenthal (15 November 1993C).

  8. Rosenthal (15 November 1993C) remarks that many Russian Jews would have been repelled by the Slavophile literature since it was assertively anti-Semitic in its orientation.

  9. In her adult years, Rand (1979bT) recollected that she went to two different schools in two different cities and was the “top” student in each of the respective classes. She does not name either school.

  10. B. Branden 1986, 27. Branden (1986) also writes: “I corresponded with Dmitri Nabokov, the son of Vladimir, in an effort to locate and talk to his aunt. I learned from him that his father had had two sisters, one of whom had died; the other one [Helene Sikorski], whom he was kind enough to question for me, had no memory of Alice Rosenbaum; Alice’s young friend must have been the deceased sister” (27 n. 1).

  11. H. Sikorski, 12 October 1992C. Another classmate of Helene’s, Helena Posener Vilga belonged to the 1916–17 class. She does not remember Alissa Rosenbaum. But since Rand may have been in Olga’s class, Rand would not have been in Helene’s. Special thanks to Boris Lossky (29 May–4 June 1992C) for forwarding to me this information from Madame Vilga. Boris himself attended the Stoiunin school in the academic years 1913–14 and 1914–15. During that time, boys were admitted into the college preparatory classes of the girls’ school. Boris does not remember Alissa, but he was registered in the Chidlovsky gymnasium, another coed school, in 1915–16 and 1916–17, the very years that Alissa was friends with Olga. Boris returned to the Stoiunin school in the 1917–18 school year and remained there until 1921–22. By the fall of 1918, Alissa departed for the Crimea with her family. The Nabokov sisters had also left Petrograd. Olga Vladimirovna Petkevich died in 1978.

  12. Boyd 1990, 44, 61. Special thanks to Brian Boyd for having put me in touch with Helene Sikorski.

  13. Not unlike other Petrograd gymnasiums, the Stoiunin school day probably ran from 9 A.M. to 3 P.M., six days a week from mid-September to late May, with a two-week Christmas vacation between semesters and a one-week Easter break. Boyd (1990, 86) describes the similarly constituted Tenishev gymnasium, in which Vladimir Nabokov was enrolled. In her later years, Rand ([1964] 1993bT) was critical of Nabokov’s work.

  14. Rand in Peikoff 1980T, Lecture 1.

  15. According to Boris Lossky (27 October 1992C), teachers of German and French in the Institutes of Foreign Languages at the Stoiunin school during the period of 1910–22 included Besantux, Chikhacheva, Gourault, Hartmann, Joue, Kamenskaia, Kiehl, Koniuchenko, Perschre, Raynault, and Staatsbaeder. Anna Rosenbaum does not appear among the foreign language teachers. There were many other Petrograd gymnasiums in which she could have taught.

  16. Baker 1987, 3. Such atheism was a tenet of Russian radicalism well before Marxism. Rosenthal, 15 November 1993C.

  17. Rand [1936] 1959 is hereafter cited as We the Living by page number in both text and notes. The 1936 edition is similarly cited, but as We the Living (1936).

  18. Guerney 1960, xvii; Rosenthal, 15 November 1993C.

  19. Copleston 1986, 313; Rosenthal, “Introduction,” in Rosenthal 1986, 34.

  20. Ibid. Kline, 18 August 1993C.

  21. Friese, “Student life in a soviet university,” in Kline 1957, 53.

  22. Ivanov, “The training of soviet engineers,” in Kline 1957, 162.

  23. The trend toward scholastic democratization predates the Bolsheviks. Under the Provisional Government of 1917, the professoriate was able to achieve a degree of autonomy in shaping educational legislation. The
czarist regime had barred women from university instruction, though these restrictions were eased in the years prior to the Revolution. But the czarist regime had also set severe quotas on Jews, and gave preference to the graduates of elite classical gymnasiums. Under the Provisional Government, each institution was granted the right to set its own admission policies. Petrograd University, along with other institutions, moved toward eliminating these restrictions. Though the Soviets eventually lifted the restrictions universally, they began to introduce new preferential guidelines for proletarian youth. The professoriate’s newly won autonomy was another casualty of revolution. McClelland 1989, 247–55.

  24. For this insight, and for his translation of the Leningrad dossier, thanks to Kline (20 October 1992C).

  25. Rand quoted in Current Biography 1982, 332.

  26. Peikoff 1990-91T, Lecture 7. Peikoff (1985T, Lecture 3) remarks that Rand achieved an excellent university education because she benefited from the instruction of fine teachers, like Lossky and others, who were carried over from the pre-Bolshevik period. Peikoff (1983T, Lecture 4) also argues that Rand’s decision to major in history reflected her “inductive method” of formulating concepts through [historical] observation. Once these concepts were formed inductively, Rand deduced the logical implications of the principles involved.

  27. Rand, “About the author,” in Atlas Shrugged, 1170.

  28. Emmons, “Introduction: Got’e and his diary,” in Got’e 1988, 21–22.

  29. Rand (June 1979), “Questions and answers on Anthem,” in Column, 118.

  30. Rand quoted in Current Biography 1982, 332.

  31. See Shteppa 1962, 33–38, for a more detailed discussion of the history textbooks in use during the early Soviet period.

  32. Marxist historiography underwent many transformations during the lifespan of the Soviet Union to conform to the temper of the times. Pokrovsky’s Marxist orthodoxy was later overthrown by the patriots and Russian chauvinists during the Stalinist period. Afterward, Marxist-Leninist historiography came back into favor. Shteppa 1962, 380.

  33. I would like to thank Boris Lossky for arranging my receipt of this dossier from the Leningrad archivists. The official dossier, stamped by the archivists with the seal of the university, lists Rand’s original name as “Rosenbaum, Alissa Zinovievna.” It indicates her year of birth (1905), and her enrollment in the Department of Social Pedagogy in the College of Social Sciences. It also includes the date of her admission and the date on which she concluded her studies, thus, finishing the requirements for the degree. The dossier includes no specific information on her actual classes, teachers, or grades. My discussion of her curriculum is gleaned from Rand’s reminiscences as reported to Barbara Branden (1986), and from my own understanding of the structure of study at the university.

  34. Thanks to Andrew Lossky, Boris Lossky, and George Kline for assisting me in the reconstruction of the history department’s distinguished personnel during the early Soviet period. The following list is not exhaustive, but it constitutes the bulk of historians in the department. The Petrograd history department had a grand tradition of scholarship. Several historians who taught at Petrograd emigrated prior to Alissa Rosenbaum’s enrollment, including Michail T. Rostovtsev, who taught ancient history. Despite their political differences, Lunacharsky praised Rostovtsev for his archaeological expertise.

  35. Platonov was arrested in January 1930 as part of a supposed plot to restore the monarchy. Emmons, “Introduction: Got’e and his diary,” in Got’e 1988, 22. Other teachers in the history department were Olga Antounouvna Dobiach-Rozhdestvenskaia, who taught on the Crusades; Boris Vladimirovich Farmakovsky, who taught on the Hellenistic period of Greek sculpture; Vladimir Vasilyevich Weidle, who lectured in the history of art from 1916 to 1918 and from 1920 to 1924; and Sergei Vasil’evich Rozhdestvensky, best known for his work on sixteenth-century landholding. Rozhdestvensky taught throughout the 1920s and was arrested in October of 1929. Got’e 1988, 369 n. 84.

  36. Rand (February 1970), “The left: Old and new,” in New Left, 85.

  37. Meetings between students and faculty were becoming more commonplace during this “progressive” period of university education. Interestingly, Rand models many of her fictional characters in We the Living on actual people whom she met while living in Russia. Peikoff indicates that Uncle Vassili was modeled after Rand’s father, Kira’s mother was like Rand’s mother, and Leo was named after Rand’s first love. Peikoff and Scott 1988T. In this same novel, there is a character named “Captain Karsavin.” Karsavin is a White Army leader who is captured by Andrei Taganov, the idealistic communist soldier. Captain Karsavin is forced to commit suicide. It is possible that Rand modeled the captain after his namesake at the university, who was eventually exiled by the Bolsheviks for his counterrevolutionary ideals. The “Captain Karsavin” episode appears in We the Living, 101–3. Another of Rand’s early Russian characters, from the screenplay “Red Pawn,” is named “Kareyev.” Kareyev is the commandant of Strastnoy Island. Rand (1931–32), “Red Pawn,” in Early Ayn Rand, 111. Likewise, Rand may have taken the name “Kareyev” from Petrograd history professor, Kareev.

  38. An English translation of Thus Spake Zarathustra was the first book that Rand purchased in the United States. B. Branden 1986, 45.

  39. Zielinsky quoted in Curtis, “Michael Bakhtin, Nietzsche, and Russian pre-revolutionary thought,” in Rosenthal 1986, 344.

  40. Ibid., 345. Zielinsky saw both Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky as modern expositors of the classical Greek influence (348). Rosenthal (15 November 1993C) observes that Zielinsky was also anti-Semitic.

  41. Rosenthal, “Introduction,” in Rosenthal 1986, 4, 34.

  42. Rosenthal (15 November 1993C) suggests too, that the Soviets were deeply critical of Nietzsche’s “idealism” and his antimaterialism.

  43. B. Branden, interview, 26 January 1992. It is unclear how many courses Alissa would have had to pass for the three-year degree. Degree requirements changed frequently during this period. Nevertheless, Alissa’s course load as a history major would have been heavy. As a philosophy minor, she may have been required to take only two or three electives, including Lossky’s course.

  44. B. Branden, interview, 26 January 1992.

  45. Rand did not concede a philosophical debt to Nietzsche, even though, as a child, she had been impressed with aspects of his work.

  46. B. Branden, quoted in Reedstrom 1992, 4.

  47. B. Branden 1986, 42. In relation to her university studies, Rand (1979bT) recollects one particularly memorable adage from an ancient “Greek philosopher” whose name she did not remember. When discussing the possibility of her own death, Rand was fond of citing this maxim: “I will not die, it’s the world that will end.” (I was unable to locate this quotation in the works of any ancient philosophers.) If indeed, Rand encountered this statement at age sixteen, it may have been in the context of Lossky’s course on the ancients.

  48. B. Branden, “Who is Ayn Rand?” in Branden and Branden 1962, 165.

  49. Kline, 28 February 1992C; N. Lossky, 12 February 1992C; A. Lossky, 2 March 1992C; B. Lossky, 4 March 1992C.

  50. Thanks to Cox (17 March 1993C) for this suggestion.

  51. McClelland 1989, 260; Lossky 1969, 209–10. Lossky wrote his Memoirs intermittently between 1935 and 1956, and they were published posthumously, by Boris, in 1968–69.

  52. B. Lossky and N. Lossky 1978, 14. Hylozoism is the doctrine that matter and life are inseparable. Vitalism views life as caused or sustained by a vital principle that is neither chemical nor physical.

  53. This question is raised by Boris Lossky (29 May–4 June 1992C; 27 October 1992C). Peikoff (27 May 1992C) has indicated that Rand’s Estate is compiling biographical data and, as yet, has not found any relevant information that would shed light on the perplexities of the Lossky-Rand connection.

  54. It should be emphasized “that the mere mention of Lossky’s name” was never made in public; Rand recorded these recollections p
rivately with her future biographer. Barbara Branden (28 June 1993C) states that she “never heard [Rand] mention him publicly.”

  55. Kline (18 August 1993C) notes that during the period of Lossky’s last days, Zenkovsky had sent him a copy of his Osnovy khristianskoi filosofii (Foundations of Christian philosophy), which was to be published in two volumes. Apparently, Lossky was much too weak to write anything in Zenkovsky’s copy except “Sochuvstvuiu” [I sympathize].

  56. B. Branden, interview, 9 October 1992.

  57. B. Branden, interview, 26 January 1992.

  58. B. Branden, interview, 6 May 1992.

  59. There is some evidence substantiating Rand’s knowledge of the ancients. She exhibits an understanding of Aristotle and Plato. In her work on epistemology, she also deals briefly with the contributions of pre-Socratic philosophers such as Pythagoras, Protagoras, Zeno, and Parmenides. See Introduction, 8, 90, 248, 262. And in her journals, Rand criticized Thales as the father of cosmology. Rand (19 June 1958), “From Ayn Rand’s unpublished writings: Philosophic notes, 1949–1958,” in Binswanger 5.4.7–8.

  60. Despite his doubts, Boris Lossky (27 October 1992C) does not question his father’s philosophical influence on Rand. He believes that Rand may have been well acquainted with his father’s works, even if she did not actually study with him.

  61. For this suggestion, thanks to Cox (17 March 1993C).

  62. B. Lossky, 29 May–4 June 1992C. Barbara Branden (28 June 1993C) indicates that the temperature readings recorded in her biography were not derived from her taped interviews with Rand. Branden states that the unusual temperature readings were garnered from two separate sources.

  63. Rand quoted in Current Biography 1982, 332.

  64. Central Committee report quoted in Fitzpatrick 1979, 76–77.

  65. Solzhenitsyn (1973, 372) reports that there were nearly three hundred prominent Russian humanists who were exiled in 1922. Additional small groups were exiled in 1923.