Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical

by Sciabarra, Chris

  Thus the elements of the whole may be separated in one respect, but “in another respect they have the same basis and belong to the same whole. Their very separateness necessarily demands that in some other respect they should be united and interdependent” (13). Those who subscribe to the inorganic, mechanistic, and atomistic perspective conceive of atoms as independent of one another. Yet the atoms themselves belong to one universe in which they interact. The “single whole space” of the universe constitutes “the one all-embracing basis” that is common to all of its constituent elements. Hence the position and movement of an atom is relative within the broader context of the whole.

  Lossky argued that not even the atomist can deny the essentially organic structure of the world. For even in the atomist’s denial is the retention of wholeness with every judgment made. Every philosophical theory presumes the idea of a whole that constitutes and is constituted by its elements. Thus the idea of an organic “whole lies at the root of every judgement we make concerning any object whatsoever” (8). If we deny such an organic, relational structure to reality, we forfeit the conditions that make the world knowable.

  Lossky’s organicism and intemalism proliferate throughout his works, even in his less than fully developed aesthetics. Though Lossky lacked a formalized philosophy of art, he viewed each work of art as a totality, “the successive parts of which exist in consequence and for the sake of one another as well as of the whole: the parts of such a whole are not only a means but also an end for one another” (159–60). In this regard, Lossky appropriated a notable Aristotelian theme. In De Poetica, Aristotle wrote:

  The truth is that, just as in the other imitative arts one imitation is always of one thing, so in poetry the story, as an imitation of action, must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole. For that which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or absence is no real part of the whole.37

  Lossky ([1917] 1928) expresses this same organicist sentiment with regard to musical composition: A piece of music is a complex whole in which its constituent elements form an organic unity. Each part is in harmony with the other, and all parts exist for the whole (48).

  And yet, despite the ultimate necessity of holding an organic view on all ontological, epistemological, and aesthetic issues, Lossky is compelled to explain the prevalence of inorganic and atomistic conceptions. If organicism and internalism are true of reality and of knowledge, then why do fragmented perspectives endure?

  Lossky argued that since knowledge requires comparison, differentiation, and analysis, it can disintegrate into atomistic elements. Like all entities on earth, humans are beings of finite capabilities. At any given moment, they focus on “some one part of the world” and abstract this part from the whole in a particular respect. Since knowledge expands with the addition of information, they can conclude falsely “that knowledge consists in constructing in our minds a complex whole out of independent elements.” This is the Kantian error which fails to discriminate “our acts of knowing from that which is known.” Such a mistake must inevitably “ascribe the characteristic of fragmentariness to the objects of knowledge and to the whole knowable world” (15).

  Lossky believed, however, that the analysis that is performed by the mind yields a partial and incomplete picture of the whole. Lossky was unable to attain a fully integrative and organic view without the infusion of mystical elements. As a religious philosopher, Lossky hypothesized that an Absolute “being whose powers of attention and discrimination were infinite would be capable of contemplating everything at the same time, both as connected with and as distinguished from everything” (16). Such an omniscient being would be incapable of error, but He would be able to see the organic whole “in its differentiated aspect at once, without being broken up in time” (ibid.).

  In his analysis of the persistence of fragmentation, Lossky seems oblivious to institutional or historical explanations. Marx maintained, for instance, that it was the capitalist mode of production that made such fragmentation possible, and inevitable. And it was Lossky’s student, Ayn Rand, who proposed that social fragmentation was a constituent element of a broader systemic irrationality: statism.

  The thought of N. O. Lossky was a fusion of complementary organicist and internalist tendencies in Russian and Western philosophy. Lossky’s ideal-realism exhibited a Russian proclivity to synthesize opposites and resolve antagonisms. He rejected the dualistic obsession with dichotomies of rationalism or empiricism, idealism or materialism, knowledge or existence. These alternatives were, for him, partial and incomplete. Like other thinkers in Russian philosophy, however, Lossky achieved the ultimate integration through a mystical Absolute. His system of hierarchical personalism embraced a vision of the world as an organic whole, a unity of sobornost’ achieved in God’s Kingdom of Harmony.

  Ayn Rand’s philosophical project embodies this same struggle against dualities, the same powerful propensity toward synthesis. But although she appears to have inadvertently accepted her teacher’s formal dialectical insights, she adamantly opposed his mysticism.

  3

  EDUCATING ALISSA

  In 1945, Rand wrote:

  When I am questioned about myself, I am tempted to say, paraphrasing Roark [the protagonist of The Fountainhead]: “Don’t ask me about my family, my childhood, my friends or my feelings. Ask me about the things I think.” It is the content of a person’s brain, not the accidental details of his life, that determines his character. My own character is in the pages of The Fountainhead. For anyone who wishes to know me, that is essential. The specific events of my private life are of no importance whatever. I have never had any private life in the usual sense of the word. My writing is my life.1

  In this passage, Rand suggests that she is “tempted” to adopt an “essence-accident” distinction in the definition of her own life. The essential Rand is the thinking Rand. What she has written and what she thinks are what she considers most fundamental to answering the question, “Who is Ayn Rand?” The events and life experiences that shaped her thought are “accidental details” and “of no importance whatever” in grasping the significance of her character.

  Although I perforce distinguish the philosophy from the philosopher, I believe that Rand’s self-portrait here verges on the reification of her intellect as a disembodied abstraction. One cannot focus exclusively on the philosopher’s character or, more important, on the philosopher’s body of work as if either were generated and developed in a vacuum. Rand herself often paid close attention to context and history in the analysis of philosophical and cultural trends. And yet she paints an oddly flat portrait of her own being. By concentrating on her ideas to the exclusion of her developmental psychology, social interactions, and experiences, she achieves a one-sidedness that is in stark contrast to the richness and complexity of her own mode of analysis.

  What Rand wished to emphasize was that ideas mattered. She never would have completely discounted the influence of social relationships on a person’s thinking. Nor was she apt to create a dichotomy between a person’s thought and emotions. But at times, she did exhibit a problematic tendency to view ideas as the sole means for understanding human behavior or for judging an individual’s moral worth. In her novels, characters often serve as embodiments of ideas; they are one-sided expressions of specific philosophic principles. In her theory of history, this tendency to emphasize the importance of ideas could translate into a crude form of philosophical determinism.

  But within the present context, I cannot accept Rand’s self-evaluation. Her ideas cannot be fully understood without an appreciation of their historical context. That context includes some of her most important life experiences. Certainly Rand’s ideas are not knee-jerk, emotional responses to personal trauma. But an assessment of her philosophy and her place in intellectual history cannot be complete without a contextual and developmenta
l foundation. Rand would be the first to admit that “the content of a person’s brain” derives from experiential, objective reality.2 One can no more divorce experience from thought than one can separate body and mind. The two are inseparably linked. Emphasizing Rand’s ideas to the exclusion of her life experiences or, alternatively, Rand’s private life to the exclusion of her ideas, leads to a predictably distorted view of her historical significance.

  Here I attempt to fill some of the major gaps in our knowledge of Rand’s formative years of development, perhaps to discover an experiential link between Objectivist philosophy and its Russian antecedents. There is not much information available on Rand’s education in Russia. I have been obliged to combine significant factual evidence with a certain degree of reasonable speculation.

  THE EARLY YEARS

  In an early biographical essay, Barbara Branden portrays Ayn Rand the child exhibiting a desire to integrate facts and values. Echoing the yearning for synthesis ever-present in the Russian psyche, the young Alissa Rosenbaum learned to reject “any such inner dichotomy.”3 Though Branden’s characterization was garnered from her subject’s mature self-reflections, it is clear that the integration of traditional polarities was the leitmotif of Rand’s lifelong philosophical project. Rand argued that she had always held the same basic philosophic convictions from the time of childhood, and that it was only her applications and knowledge which expanded over time.4

  But as the young Alissa Rosenbaum, she learned to think with a rigorous methodology. She mastered the art of tracing philosophic interconnections. And she achieved these intellectual feats within the context of her growing passion for literary writing.

  From her earliest school days in St. Petersburg, Alissa fell in love with arithmetic.5 Her intelligence was manifested initially as she began to master the logic and precision of the mathematical sciences. However, she despised the rote learning and drill techniques of her early teachers. She read her textbooks, staying ahead of her lessons, never needing to invest great effort in the comprehension of any discipline.6 In later years, Rand (1979bT) recalled that she would sit in the back row of the class and write short stories when she was bored with the subject matter. Disappointed with the tragic plots of Russian children’s books, Rand was writing screenplays from age eight and adventure novels from age ten.

  With the first shots of World War I, Alissa’s universe was transformed dramatically. By 1916, under the mounting pressures of war, Petrograd was disintegrating. Starvation, inflation, labor strikes, crime, and czarist tyranny would bring forth the Russian Revolution. In February–March of 1917, Petrograd workers precipitated mass food riots.7 Czarist troops mutinied rather than fire on their comrades. In retaliation the czar dissolved the Duma. But it was too late. In Petrograd two authorities were vying for political legitimacy: a Duma committee of liberal constitutionalists, and a Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Under pressure from the Petrograd Soviet, the Duma committee established a provisional government headed by Prince Lvov. Alexander Kerensky, a moderate social revolutionary, was granted admittance to the government. Within three days, Czar Nicholas had abdicated (Palmer and Colton 1971, 781–92).

  Alissa was dazzled by this popular revolt against the czar, and she was initially impressed by Kerensky’s republican impulses, but she rarely articulated her political attitudes in front of her family. Zinovy, Alissa’s father, a nonobservant Jew, tried to shelter his three daughters from the growing disorder; he strongly discouraged the discussion of politics at home. Only after the Revolution could no longer be ignored did he share his views with his family. It was only then that Alissa realized that her faith in the dignity of the individual reflected his own intense belief in the struggle for human freedom.8 In her father Alissa had found a spiritual ally.

  THE STOIUNIN GYMNASIUM

  It was during this time that Alissa began more advanced gymnasium studies. There are no records of exactly where she undertook these studies,9 but the circumstantial evidence suggests that in the academic year 1916–17, and quite possibly in 1915–16 and 1917–18 as well, she was enrolled in the gymnasium of Maria Nikolaievna Stoiunina.

  According to Nicholas Lossky (12 February 1992C) this famous gymnasium for girls and young ladies was founded by Maria Stoiunina and her husband, Vladimir Stoiunin, for the distinctive purpose of furthering their “very much avant-garde ideas in the field of education for women.” As a secondary or middle school, the Stoiunin Gymnasium aimed to prepare female students for university instruction. It accepted girls from ages ten and eleven and brought them through a college preparatory program by age seventeen. Alissa, aged ten, could have entered the Stoiunin Gymnasium as early as the fall semester of 1915–16. One interesting piece of evidence to confirm her presence in this gymnasium emerges from her adult recollections. Barbara Branden, quoting from an interview with Rand, writes:

  Alice did make one girlfriend, also a classmate, shortly after the February revolution [February 1917]. The girl was a sister of Vladimir Nabokov; her father was a cabinet minister in the Kerensky government. “She was very interested in politics, as was I, and this brought us together. It was a friendship based on conscious common interest.” … The two girls discussed their ideas on the revolution—the Nabokov girl defended constitutional monarchy, but Alice believed in a republic, in the rule of law. They exchanged political pamphlets which were sold on the streets of Petrograd but which were forbidden by their parents: they read the pamphlets secretly, and discussed them. The friendship lasted only a short time. The girl’s father, realizing that conditions were getting worse and that it was dangerous to remain, left Russia with his family at the end of the year. Alice never saw her friend again.10

  Presently in her eighties, Helene Vladimirovna Sikorski, sister of Vladimir Nabokov, confirms that both she and her sister, Olga, were enrolled in the Stoiunin Gymnasium during the period in question.11 Olga Vladimirovna was born in January 1903 and Helene Vladimirovna in March 1906.12 In 1915–16, Olga began studying at the Stoiunin school in the second class (for children aged twelve and thirteen). Helene began school the following year. Both of these sisters were in attendance at the Stoiunin Gymnasium in 1916–17. Although Rand was correct to note that the Nabokovs left Petrograd near the end of 1917, she was mistaken in thinking that they left Russia at this time. In fact, the Nabokovs left Petrograd in mid-November 1917, and Russia only in April of 1919.

  Helene does not remember Alissa Rosenbaum, but she confirms that her sister Olga was deeply interested in politics at the time, favoring constitutional monarchy because she was influenced by her father’s opinions. Born in 1905, Alissa was a contemporary of both Nabokov sisters. In February of 1917, Olga was fourteen, Alissa was twelve. Though there was a two-year difference between Olga Nabokov and Alissa Rosenbaum, it is still quite possible that the young girls were indeed classmates. In 1921, Alissa entered college when she was sixteen, at least a year ahead of others in her class. This suggests that she was more advanced than other girls her age. At the Stoiunin Gymnasium, the school year lasted from mid-September to late May. Olga and Alissa were probably in the same class for at least three months in the spring semester and two months in the fall 1917 semester.13

  In later years, Rand never mentioned the name of the gymnasium in which she was enrolled. But some of her most vivid scholastic memories were of the academic year, 1917–18. She remembered that one teacher influenced her in classical language when she was twelve or thirteen years old. Alissa read Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse and wrote a paper on the book’s characters. The teacher gave her a lesson in literary causality, teaching her to judge characters by specific incidents or actions.14

  Also in these years, Alissa began to formulate a conscious philosophy by “thinking in principles.” She questioned every idea she held. She attempted “to name her path, to grasp it, to conceptualize it, and, most important, to put it under her conscious control” (B. Branden 1986, 22). Alissa began to keep a personal journa
l and philosophical diary as she entered a period of self-critical, “wonderfully intense intellectual excitement” (ibid.).

  While in school, Alissa studied the works of Turgenev, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and many of the classic Russian poets. She did not care much for Russian literature. Alissa’s mother, Anna Rosenbaum, who was a language teacher in several Petrograd high schools,15 introduced her daughter to the works of the great French Romantic, Victor Hugo. Hugo’s heroic visions profoundly inspired Alissa. She credited Hugo as being the single greatest literary influence on her work (B. Branden 1986, 24).

  All of these significant intellectual events took place in Alissa Rosenbaum’s world of 1917–18, the very period in which she probably can be placed at the Stoiunin Gymnasium, with its rich, college-preparatory program. Alissa’s presence in this school has some importance. Maria Nikolaievna Stoiunina and Vladimir Stoiunin, the founders of the famous gymnasium, were the parents of N. O. Lossky’s wife. As his in-laws, they invited Lossky to teach at the gymnasium. He taught both logic and psychology to select classes of young women from 1898 through 1922. Usually, Lossky gave instructions to the graduating class, those who were at least seventeen, but it is not impossible that Alissa could have learned of the great Lossky while at the Stoiunin Gymnasium. It is not impossible that she could have enrolled in one of his college preparatory courses. It is certainly possible that in her typically disciplined manner, Alissa was charting a future educational direction which would include further study with the distinguished Lossky at Petrograd University.

  THE CRIMEAN GYMNASIUM

  Unfortunately, however, Alissa was living during a time when goals were not easily realized. In the aftermath of the October revolution, the Rosenbaum family was terrorized by the Bolsheviks. Zinovy’s pharmacy was nationalized, and his family’s situation grew worse by the day. Their savings dwindled. They had little to eat. The political climate in Petrograd was grave. With no end to food and fuel shortages, street violence, and sabotage, the Rosenbaum family, like the Nabokov family before them, fled to the Crimea.