20 April 2001<\/p>\n
\u201cWe the Living<\/em> is not a story about Soviet Russia in 1925.\u00a0 It is a story about Dictatorship, any dictatorship, anywhere, at any time, whether it be Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, or \u2013 which this novel might do its share in helping to prevent \u2013 a socialist America.\u201d\u00a0 These words, written by Ayn Rand herself for the foreword to the 1959 printing of her 1936 novel We the Living<\/em>, convey not only Rand\u2019s direction to the reader to keep in mind the universality of the book\u2019s theme, but also her opinion of communism in 1925 Russia and her suspicion that the United States might be headed down the same erroneous path.\u00a0 During her lifetime, Rand would write prolifically both fiction and non-fiction, and found a philosophical movement whose widespread appeal would spark both loyalty and controversy.\u00a0 However, We the Living<\/em> is Rand\u2019s first, and possibly most-accessible, statement on the nature of communist oppression and the immorality associated with man\u2019s tolerance of it.<\/p>\n Born in Russia in 1905, Ayn Rand (nee <\/em>Alice Rosembaum) immigrated in 1926 to the United States where, after a short visit with a cousin in Chicago, she proceeded to find work almost immediately in Hollywood, first as an extra and then as a junior screenwriter.\u00a0 It was while she was working at the studio for director Cecil B. DeMille that she met her future husband, Frank O\u2019Connor.\u00a0 He was a minor actor, described as handsome and kind, but \u201cby all evidence unassertive, passive, not at all like the Rand version of the ideal man\u201d (Gladstein 9).\u00a0 Although some sources allege that she married O\u2019Connor in an effort to gain permanent resident status in the country (Walker xiv), others maintain that Rand found in her husband \u201ca spiritual soul mate\u201d (Gladstein 9).\u00a0 Whichever account is more accurate, the two married in 1929 and remained married until O\u2019Connor\u2019s death in 1979 at eighty-two years of age.\u00a0<\/p>\n During the seventeen years following her marriage, Rand worked at several jobs, sold her first screenplay (which was never produced), and witnessed the Broadway production of her play Night of January 16th<\/sup><\/em>.\u00a0 Rand\u2019s first novel, We the Living<\/em>, was published in 1936, three years after its completion.\u00a0 Two years later, the British publishing house Cassell produced the first printing of Anthem.<\/em><\/p>\n In 1940 Rand worked on the presidential election campaign of Wendell Wilkie, a self-described defender of free enterprise.\u00a0 Rand believed strongly in the individualism that she thought Wilkie represented and she felt that the trend toward collectivism under Roosevelt should be opposed.\u00a0 However, during the election she grew to believe that Wilkie had betrayed his own values, and consequently hers, in his pursuit of victory.\u00a0 She left that experience disillusioned and distrustful of \u201cthose who called themselves conservatives and supporters of capitalism\u201d (Gladstein 11).\u00a0<\/p>\n Rand\u2019s The Fountainhead<\/em> was released in 1943 and received some critical acclaim.\u00a0 Although it was not initially a best-seller, its popularity grew steadily and later in the year Rand sold the film rights to it for $50,000.\u00a0 Rand was hired to write the screen adaptation.\u00a0 The movie was released in 1949 with Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal in the leading roles.<\/p>\n It was in 1950 that Rand met Nathaniel Branden (then Nathan Blumenthal), arguably the first follower of what was to become Objectivism.\u00a0 Rand and Branden would subsequently develop a relationship of mutual admiration and benefit that lasted eighteen years.\u00a0 Branden had read The Fountainhead<\/em>in college and was so moved by it that he wrote a letter to the author, expressing his gratitude and admiration.\u00a0 Affected by his letter, Rand, along with O\u2019Connor, agreed to meet with Branden and his girlfriend (later wife), Barbara Weidman.\u00a0 The four became good friends and together shared many long evenings of philosophical discussion.\u00a0 Both couples moved to New York in 1951, and later that year the four began to invite others to sit in on their conversations.\u00a0 They discussed, among other things, ways in which to apply Rand\u2019s philosophy to their own daily lives.\u00a0 This was the very beginning of a movement which endures even today, years after Ayn Rand\u2019s death.<\/p>\n Atlas Shrugged<\/em>was Ayn Rand\u2019s last novel.\u00a0 It was published in 1957, and shortly after its emergence on the literary scene Nathaniel Branden initiated a public teaching of Rand\u2019s philosophical principles.\u00a0 He began a course of lecture-based study which included the title \u201cBasic Principles of Objectivism\u201d in the spring of 1958.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Nathaniel Branden Institute, born of the Nathaniel Branden Lectures series, grew to include a publication branch, film theater, and social organization which sponsored dances, sporting events, and fashion shows (Gladstein 15).\u00a0 It published The Objectivist Newsletter<\/em> in conjunction with Ayn Rand.\u00a0 Rand endorsed these activities and Branden, enjoying ever larger popularity and recognition partly as a result of them.\u00a0 She received honorary degrees, was interviewed regularly, and spread her philosophy through books, radio and print media.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ultimately, however, fame did not agree with Ayn Rand.\u00a0 Some sources claim that it was because of the fame and adulation that she became autocratic and intolerant.\u00a0 Formerly close friends and followers were expelled from her presence.\u00a0 Those who dared disagree or even failed to meet Rand\u2019s demands were shut out of her life and her group.\u00a0 Remaining followers were strongly discouraged from having contact with those who had been shunned.\u00a0 It is aspects such as these that have brought many to consider Rand\u2019s movement cult-like, and to condemn it as destructive (Walker 63).\u00a0\u00a0 Although Rand\u2019s ideology is based on individualism and personal freedom, the group which organized to practice these ideals was ultimately transformed into a \u201ccollective,\u201d resembling everything Rand proclaimed to be oppressive and therefore immoral.<\/p>\n Objectivism, in its essential form, espouses \u201cobjective reality, reason, self-interest, and capitalism\u201d (Essentials of Objectivism par.1), all the things that the Communist Party of 1925 Russia decried.\u00a0 Rand\u2019s description in We the Living<\/em>of life in Petrograd during that time provides a clear understanding of the hardships that resulted from the Bolshevik Revolution and its ensuing changes.\u00a0 Rand herself called We the Living<\/em> her most autobiographical novel, although she denied that the events of her life were also those of the book\u2019s heroine, Kira.<\/p>\n Like Ayn Rand\u2019s, Kira Argounova\u2019s family was affluent.\u00a0 Before the revolution, Kira\u2019s father had owned and operated a factory in St. Petersburg (renamed Petrograd) and her family had inhabited the \u201cvast mansion\u201d in which she was born.\u00a0 There was also a summer residence and a governess.\u00a0 There were material luxuries and the intangible luxuries of wild freedom and security.\u00a0 Like her creator, Kira left church as a small child and never returned.\u00a0 Also like Rand, Kira learned early that she preferred not to spend her time or energy on philanthropic activities.\u00a0 Of this character Rand wrote, \u201cThe specific events of Kira\u2019s life were not mine; her ideas, her convictions, her values were and are\u201d (Rand ix).<\/p>\n Rand believed that the story was the most important part of writing.\u00a0 We the Living<\/em>is a good story \u2013 readable, intriguing.\u00a0 The story opens with the return of Kira Argounova and her family to Petrograd after a four-year flight from the violence of the revolution.\u00a0 Kira\u2019s father\u2019s textile factory has been nationalized, and their expansive home has been turned into living accommodations for several families.\u00a0 Proceeding to the home of her aunt\u2019s family, Kira and her parents and sister encounter the severity of life in newly socialized Russia.\u00a0 Since his business, too, has been appropriated \u201cfor the people,\u201d Kira\u2019s uncle has begun to sell off family possessions for money.\u00a0 Although some private enterprise is beginning to be allowed, money is practically nonexistent.\u00a0 Food is rationed; only students in state academies and workers in nationalized businesses may have ration cards.\u00a0 This family has only two ration cards to obtain food for five people.\u00a0<\/p>\n After registering with the State and obtaining her Labor Book, Kira is allowed to enroll at the Technological Institute, where she will study engineering.\u00a0 Living quarters are found, and the family manages to retrieve some small amount of the furniture they had to leave behind four years earlier.\u00a0 Life resumes, but not as usual.\u00a0 Kira\u2019s father opens a textile shop, small and mostly barren of goods \u2013 a far cry from his former industry.\u00a0 Still, he manages to trade for a few of the necessities it has become so hard to get.\u00a0 Commodities are in short supply; lines are long.\u00a0 Rand\u2019s descriptions almost place the reader on the sulky street, in a line with exhausted, underfed and extremely frustrated citizens of the new Russian Socialist Federalist Soviet Republic.\u00a0 The tone is bleak.<\/p>\n Kira meets Leo Kovalensky on a dark night in a seedy neighborhood.\u00a0 He is mysterious; she lets him believe she is a prostitute rather than letting him get away.\u00a0 They walk and talk, and make a plan to see one another again.\u00a0 This is an odd situation.\u00a0 There appears to be no reason for the immediate attraction of these two characters, yet it is almost palpable.\u00a0 Perhaps because of the desperation of their surroundings, it is not that difficult for the reader to believe that they have an instantaneous connection.\u00a0 By their third meeting they are making an escape together, on a secret ship to a secret future.\u00a0 They are caught.\u00a0 They don\u2019t even know one another\u2019s name.\u00a0<\/p>\n Very, very little in We the Living<\/em> is cheerful.\u00a0\u00a0 Kira\u2019s and Leo\u2019s relationship, passionate and loving in the beginning, begins to deteriorate under the hardships they face and because of their different reactions to these hardships.\u00a0 Kira, a realist, continues to attend classes until she is forced out of school because of her family\u2019s Bourgeois background.\u00a0 She provides as much normalcy as possible for her lover in their home.\u00a0 After her expulsion from school she works at various jobs in order to keep her ration card, attempting to balance idealistic life with her dissident lover and practical necessities such as food and rent.\u00a0 Leo resists such compromises as state employment, refusing to join the masses who see no other choice than to labor under the laws \u201cof the people.\u201d\u00a0 Eventually he opens a shop which is a front for black-market goods, in secret collaboration with a member of the Communist Party.\u00a0 He flaunts the money he gets from the proceeds, silently daring those of whom he so passionately disapproves to investigate his fortune.\u00a0 Not so secretly he hopes to be confronted by a member of the Party so that he can openly deride their oppressive ways.\u00a0 Yet he lacks the nerve to aggressively fight this movement.\u00a0 It is perhaps this weakness that drives him to self-destruction.<\/p>\n The third major character in We the Living<\/em>is Andrei Taganov, a student who becomes a school friend of Kira\u2019s.\u00a0 Although Andrei is a communist, Kira accepts him on the merits of his character.\u00a0 The two debate the politics of the movement, and eventually become close friends.\u00a0 Andrei is an interesting and frustrating character.\u00a0 Although he is shown to be a good person, loyal and compassionate with his friends, he seems blind to the adversity that Communism is causing.\u00a0 Progressing in the ranks of the Party, he earns more and more money without seeming to notice that people all around him are starving.\u00a0 Except for Kira.\u00a0 Her needs he does notice.\u00a0 Inevitably, Andrei falls in love with Kira, and eventually she begins to take advantage of that love.\u00a0 Although Andrei is not a man she could ever love in return, Kira does become his mistress in an effort to get money to save her lover, Leo.\u00a0 Ultimately, of course, all secrets are exposed, and the tragedy of the whole situation is revealed.\u00a0 Leo abandons all efforts at morality; Andrei commits suicide; and Kira is killed trying to cross the border.<\/p>\n We the Living<\/em>is a tangled intrigue, romantic and heroic.\u00a0 The consequences of requiring individuals to live for a collective good are illustrated in the destitution and demoralization of the citizens of Petrograd.\u00a0 Andrei, the character with the most honor and virtue, still finds ruin because of his affiliation with the immoral politic.\u00a0 All morality is beaten out of the characters with the most potential for it by the dire circumstances of their lives.\u00a0 An excellent, emotionally moving story, this novel leaves no doubt as to the author\u2019s feelings about the path of destruction down which socialism leads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 20 April 2001 \u201cWe the Living is not a story about Soviet Russia in 1925.\u00a0 It is a story about Dictatorship, any dictatorship, anywhere, at any time, whether it be Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, or \u2013 which this novel might … Continue reading