Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical

by Sciabarra, Chris

  Alissa continued her studies in the fall of 1918, while in the Crimea. Crimean schools were still beyond the ideological control of the Bolsheviks. Many of the instructors in Alissa’s gymnasium were “old-fashioned, pro-Czarist ladies,” who kept teaching despite the rise of communism (B. Branden 1986, 32). By this time, Alissa was expanding upon her own learning methods. Those principles, which seemed self-evident to her, were subjected to a more rigorous process of understanding and analysis. Barbara Branden writes that despite Alissa’s “remarkable memory, memory never was the tool she employed for learning” (ibid.). She was taught to use both inductive and deductive methods of analysis.

  Following the pedagogical impulses of her mother Anna, Alissa tutored her classmates in geometry. Her mathematics teacher hoped she would become a professional mathematician. Though Alissa broadened her study of mathematics and logic, she knew that the study of pure method would not be sufficient. Always suspicious of the purely abstract, she exhibited a continuing desire to merge the theoretical and the practical, the technical and the artistic. She sought out the classics of foreign literature, works by Rostand, Hugo, and Sienkiewicz. She even enrolled in American history classes, an odd elective for a Russian. It was during this same period that Alissa became an atheist. Much like the victorious Bolsheviks, Alissa saw the concept of God as rationally unprovable and deeply degrading.16 But unlike the Russian Marxists, Alissa rejected both the God of Christianity and the equally mystical, collectivist, God-state of the Communists.

  In the spring of 1921, as the Red Army solidified control of the Crimea, Alissa graduated from high school. In dire financial straits, Alissa and her mother Anna began teaching illiterate Red Army soldiers to read and write (B. Branden 1986, 38).

  As material conditions grew worse in the Crimea, Zinovy decided to return to Petrograd with his family. It was a fateful decision, for instead of seeking exile from Russia, the Rosenbaums returned to a city firmly under Red control. Although Alissa would eventually emigrate to the United States, her mother and father would later be denied permission to leave the Soviet Union and would die during the siege of Leningrad (125, 375).

  A REVOLUTION IN EDUCATION

  Petrograd was a city that Alissa had loved. As she later wrote in We the Living:17 “It was St. Petersburg; the war made it Petrograd; the revolution made it Leningrad” (226). In her first novel, Rand wrote of Petrograd as a tribute to human achievement, even as she hinted at an underlying tragedy:

  Cities grow like forests, like weeds. Petrograd did not grow. It was born finished and complete. Petrograd is not acquainted with nature. It was the work of man.… Petrograd’s grandeur is unmarred, its squalor unrelieved. Its facets are cut clearly, sharply; they are deliberate, perfect with the straight-forward perfection of man’s work.… Petrograd did not rise. It came to be at the height. It was commanded to command. It was a capital before its first stone was laid. It was a monument to the spirit of man. (229)

  But Petrograd had changed, and its revolutionary transformation was no less visible in the area of university instruction. The Red government introduced sweeping educational reforms that reflected the changes that had taken place in the character of society.

  In the days immediately following the Revolution, freedom of expression in the arts lasted for a while. Lenin was even prepared to allow the dissemination of works with which he disagreed. By 1918, a group of writers, poets, and artists had formed the Proletkult (Proletarian Cultural Movement) to encourage workers to develop a distinctively “proletarian culture.”

  These agencies sought to attract people of pure proletarian class origins. In the beginning, they operated three hundred literary workshops with an enrollment of 84,000. At its peak in 1921, membership reached 500,000. But by 1922, following Lenin’s denunciations, the number of agencies had dwindled.18 The organization was effectively disbanded in 1923, its functions gradually absorbed by the trade unions and the “Commissariat of Enlightenment.”19

  Lenin himself was rather suspicious of the Proletkult for two major reasons: First, it was a non-Party organ. Second, it advocated the creation of a new “pure” proletarian culture by suppressing every last remnant of traditional aristocratic and bourgeois culture. Lenin believed that such an ahistorical state-of-nature would be illusory; the Proletkult did not recognize the new society’s need to appropriate significant aspects of the existing culture.20 Though many bourgeois cultural trends were renounced as counterrevolutionary, it was clear that the new regime could not survive without absorbing some of the very values and institutions it abhorred. In the universities, this meant that many of the “old guard” or “bourgeois specialists” had to be employed during the transition to socialism—as long as they remained politically neutral (Fitzpatrick 1979, 3).

  Though the Bolsheviks closed the ecclesiastical schools in 1917–18 (Zernov 1963, 206), many of the remaining religious and Idealist professors retained their university positions. A number of thinkers of the religious renaissance, such as Berdyaev and Bely, continued to deliver public lectures on theology, philosophy, and ethics (McClelland 1989, 261). Gradually, the regime began to establish its own network of ideological agencies. Philosophy was subordinated to social science. A national Philosophical Institute was created in the Academy of Sciences, on a level with the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute of the Central Government, and under the supervision of the state authorities.

  The Bolsheviks also began to formulate new principles of educational and arts policy set forth by Narkompros, the Commissariat of Enlightenment. Narkompros was headed by Anatoly V. Lunacharsky between 1917 and 1929. During the early years, distinct schools of thought united by their progressive and Marxist orientation, coexisted within Narkompros. The most progressive of these schools was the Petrograders. These anti-authoritarian educators advocated so-called activity methods of teaching, which included pupil-participation and informal student-teacher relationships within a less traditional, nonscholastic curriculum. Many hoped to integrate a Marxist emphasis on the polytechnical school (Fitzpatrick 1970, 29). The Petrograd educators were influenced heavily by Deweyite progressivism (30). But despite their best efforts, many academic institutions were not willing to cooperate with Narkompros. They wished to function with full autonomy, having struggled to attain such independence for many years in their opposition to czarist control. Narkompros asserted that it would defend the independence of scholarship, but in practice it aimed to limit the influence of professors who were anti-Bolshevik and non-Marxist (68). Apparently, in defending “Enlightenment,” “autonomy,” and “progressive education,” the Commissariat had become adept at using euphemisms to conceal its growing domination of intellectual life.

  In actuality, the regime viewed academic freedom as a “bourgeois prejudice” (Sorokin [1924] 1950, 246–47). Private publishing houses were closing, hurt primarily by paper shortages. Initially, Petrograd seemed to escape the more severe censorship measures being implemented in Moscow. Despite its intention to preserve the utility of the “old guard,” while promoting the values of the new, the regime began to destroy a whole generation of intellectuals.

  With the coming of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, the state simultaneously acted to check any revival of “bourgeois” values. The sovietization of Russian intellectual life meant greater administrative control over the universities through Narkompros, the trade unions, and the Communist Party organs (McClelland 1989, 261). During the early 1920s, however, academic institutions “underwent a period of wild experimentation and extreme anarchy.” Many of the older professors could not adapt to progressive methods; many of the newer professors lacked academic expertise. Indeed, the effects were disastrous for both instructors and pupils.21

  In a far-reaching reorganization of university structure, Narkompros united the existing schools of history, philology, and law under a social science college, or fakul’tet obshchestvennykh nauk, within each university (Fitzpatrick 1979, 68). The new social science program aimed to
introduce concepts of Marxist methodology and scientific socialism. Though the non-Marxist professors resented these innovations, they were not required to demonstrate proficiency in Marxist studies. In fact, many of them continued to teach courses that had a subtle anti-Soviet bias. A continued shortage of Marxist teachers led the Central Committee to abolish many of the social science colleges that had been established, though Petrograd University was unaffected by this policy change (69–71).

  The Narkompros policy innovations fundamentally altered the organization of the university. The original university structure contained three major colleges (Kline, 20 October 1992C):

  1. The istoriko-filologicheskii fakul’tet, or College of History and Philology, broadly defined to include philosophy.

  2. The fiziko-matematicheskii fakul’tet, or College of Mathematics and Physics, which included geology, chemistry, and other hard sciences.

  3. The iuridicheskii fakul’tet, or law school.

  The new university structure placed the College of History and Philology under the social science banner. A leftist academician, N. Ya. Marr, brought to the newly organized social science college a greater emphasis on ethnology and linguistics studies. Archaeology and anthropology were also included. The law school was officially dissolved since it lacked Marxist professors. It continued to function unofficially, under the title of “former law department,” until its reestablishment in the autumn of 1926. Later, the economics department was absorbed by the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute, and the social-pedagogical department was made part of the Herzen Pedagogical Institute (Fitzpatrick 1979, 72–73).

  Within the social science colleges, the regime did not require the teaching of atheism, but instruction did have to be nonreligious. Marxist studies and politically correct textbooks were hastily introduced in the early 1920s. There was an emphasis within these Marxist courses on political economy and historical materialism. Students in the engineering schools and universities were required to spend four hours per week on these subjects.22 Petrograd University did not establish an official course on Party history and Leninism until the mid-1920s, when it was renamed Leningrad University.

  There were other innovations. Lunacharsky required that students of proletarian descent graduate without examination. Special classes were organized for their instruction, but many of these pupils were ridiculed by established academics as “zero students” (Sorokin [1924] 1950, 226–27). The Soviets also lifted admission restrictions on women and Jews as early as 1918, and abolished tuition, all in an effort to democratize the student body.23 There was less emphasis on scheduled classes, periodic examinations, homework, and discipline. Without preparation or proper orientation to new pedagogical techniques, teachers were encouraged to adopt the “laboratory” and “project” methods (Shteppa 1962, 29). The chaotic results were predictable. In any event, most changes in academic policy were somewhat beside the point; the cataclysmic conditions throughout Petrograd had dramatically affected the quality of university life. As James McClelland (1989) writes:

  The period from the fall of 1918 to the spring of 1921 was one of terrible material deprivation in central Russia and chaos, bloodshed, and fighting on the periphery. Universities and institutes remained open, but despite an initial flood on students taking advantage of the new open admissions policy, the number of those actively attending lectures soon dwindled to an abnormally low level. Some professors remained at their posts throughout the period, while many others fled, either in search of warmth and food or out of political sympathy for the Whites. (258)

  There was one final innovation introduced into Petrograd University. Effective at the beginning of the academic year 1920–21, the length of a university education was reduced from five years to three.

  As a young woman of sixteen, Alissa Rosenbaum took advantage of the new educational reforms. She did not have to face the institutional bias against women and Jews. She entered the university on 2 October 1921, in the three-year course of the obshchestvenno-pedagogicheskoe otdelenie, the Department of Social Pedagogy, which contained the historical and philosophical disciplines and was designed presumably to prepare students for careers as teachers of the social sciences.24

  Nearly three years later, in May 1924, and two months prior to her graduation, the student purges began. The authorities began ruthlessly to expel and exile those students who could not prove their proletarian class background. A regime that had ostensibly dedicated itself to the democratization of education was now creating new distinctions and privileges. But the purge commission decided to pass over those students who were on the verge of graduating. Had the traditional five-year program still been in effect, Alissa would not have been a graduating senior, and as the daughter of a “petit-bourgeois” pharmacist, she would have been expelled, or worse. She later remarked that it was “sheer accident that I escaped that purge.”25

  MAJORING IN HISTORY

  Alissa was disgusted by the “mystical chaos” of Russian academic philosophy. She was uninterested in the study of Russian literature. She decided to major in history.26 She later wrote that her systematic study of history in college was crucial “in order to have a factual knowledge of men’s past.” She minored in philosophy, “in order to achieve an objective definition of my values.” Ultimately, Alissa discovered that she could learn history, but that philosophy “had to be done by me.”27

  University life in those years was primitive. The school lacked heat and light. Reports of death by starvation, disease, and suicide proliferated. Students and professors met for lectures and discussions in cold classrooms, dormitories, and auditoriums illuminated by flickering candles (McClelland 1989, 260–61). For a period, some lectures were scheduled in the evening because professors were engaged in compulsory manual labor during the day, and students were struggling to earn a living (Sorokin [1924] 1950, 223).

  Alissa’s university had become an intellectual battleground between the “old guard” and their Soviet antagonists. The social science college was, by far, the most conflict-ridden of the newly established schools. Older professors were the targets of growing academic repression (Fitzpatrick 1979, 68). The Party had allowed many of these professors to continue with their “bourgeois-objectivist” scholarship, but this period of coexistence between these groups ended once and for all in 1928–29, when many established scholars were purged from the Academy of Science for attempting to block the election of communist scholars. Many historians were arrested, exiled, or executed.28

  In the early 1920s, the study of history was slowly supplemented by courses designed to increase politgramota or political literacy. Social science curriculums in the pedagogical institutes were modified to include new Marxist subjects and requirements. Hence, many of the history courses Alissa took initially were probably condensed to include themes in political economy, dialectical method, and historical materialism (Shteppa 1962, 29, 36). Among these courses were specific “Soviet subjects.” Rand recollected in 1971 that the ideological conditioning prevalent in U.S. educational institutions was mild in comparison to the ideological bludgeoning she had experienced (Rand 1971T). She proudly proclaimed that though there were only a very few good professors still actually teaching during this period, she remained stalwart and unaffected by the propaganda to which she was subjected (Rand 1974aT).

  In We the Living, Kira, Rand’s fictional alter ego, is compelled to take Marxist lectures and courses not unlike those Rand herself had probably attended. These included courses on the history of communist philosophy and the doctrine of historical materialism. Rand lists lectures with titles such as “Marxism,” “Proletarian Women and Illiteracy,” “The Spirit of the Collective,” “Proletarian Electrification,” “The Doom of Capitalism,” “The Red Peasant,” “The ABC of Communism,” “Comrade Lenin and Comrade Marx,” and “Marxism and Collectivism,” and Komsomol discussions on the problems with the New Economic Policy (134). The endless attacks on individualism that Alissa Rosenbaum heard in lectur
es of this type led her to formulate a futuristic vision in which the word “I” is lost to a collectivistic world. This was the basis of her poetic novelette, Anthem, written in 1937.29

  The predominance of propaganda in many of her courses did not make a high-quality education impossible. In retrospect, Rand recognized that it was under the Soviet educational system that she developed her method of “thinking in principles.” She stated that she “learned in reverse.” The system generated within her a deeply critical outlook which she carried into her adulthood. She grasped: “No matter what you are taught, listen to it critically, whether you agree or not. And if you disagree, formulate your reasons.… Under the Soviets … I learned a great deal, but only in that way.”30

  Though Marxism had been a serious presence in her history and social science courses, it did not have a monopoly on the curriculum during this period. Most of the historians in the department were non-Marxist scholars who taught from texts that featured diverse historical methodologies.31 Yet between 1919 and 1925, general approaches to ancient, medieval, and modern history were underemphasized, and studies of “socioeconomic formations” became more prominent. Marxist historiography in the study of antiquity was evident in such works as A. I. Tiumenev’s Essays on the Socioeconomic History of Ancient Greece, published in three volumes between 1920 and 1923. Tiumenev’s books greatly influenced academic scholarship and university teaching during this period. In 1923, Tiumenev also authored Did Capitalism Exist in Ancient Greece? In that same year, V. S. Sergeev’s History of Rome appeared.