Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical

by Sciabarra, Chris

  1. I detail the discovery of the Rosenbaum transcript in Sciabarra 1999b.

  2. The transcript was translated by George L. Kline on 15 November 1998, with additional translations made by Bernice Rosenthal.

  3. Almedingen (1941) reports that “[b]y 1924 … humanities had no longer any room in the Soviet scheme” (333). This would not have affected Rand’s studies at all, since she was a 1924 graduate.

  4. I have enlisted the help of several scholars in reconstructing the contents and teachers of the courses herein mentioned. Special thanks to Michael David-Fox, George Kline, Peter Konecny, Bernice Rosenthal, and Philip Swoboda. In his investigation of courses from 1923, TsGa SPb (Central State Archives in St. Petersburg) f.2556, op.1. d.318, Konecny cites additional professors in the Petrograd College of the Social Sciences: M. I. Aranov (NOT course [nauchnaia organizatsiia truda, or scientific organization of labor, an organization set up to improve labor efficiency]); B. S. Martynov (Land Law in the USSR); A. Venediktov (Organization of Industry); V. A. Zelenko (Education and Politics); and Zhizhilenko’s course on criminal law. Vladimir Vasilyevich Weidle also taught a course on the history of art.

  5. The expression “obshchee uchenie o gosudarstve” can be translated as “general doctrine” or “general theory of the state.” Thanks to both Bernice Rosenthal and George Kline for these varying translations.

  6. George Kline (in a personal correspondence, 8 February 1999) finds it curious that, as a philosophy minor, Rand never took a course in “Introduction to Philosophy,” taught by Lossky five times between 1907–8 and 1917–18, by Vvedensky in 1906–7, and by both Sergei Alekseevich Alekseev (who was known as Sergei Alekseev Askoldov) and Semyon Frank in 1916–17 (RP). Thanks to Philip Swoboda for bringing the RP volume to my attention, and to George Kline for translating its relevant pages.

  7. This course may have incorporated some formal classes on the philosophy of Fried-rich Nietzsche, a major influence on the Russian Silver Age. In Russian Radical, I speculated that Rand “was probably among the last students at the university to study Nietzsche’s philosophy formally” before Nietzsche’s works were banned by the Soviets. The transcript discloses no formal courses on Nietzsche’s philosophy, however. I speculated that Rand may have studied with Askoldov or Faddei Frantsevitch Zelinsky, both of whom used concepts from Nietzsche’s work on the nature of the will. Askoldov was also “captivated” by Lossky’s philosophy (Nikolai Starchenko in Kuvakin 1994, 658). In fact, these two thinkers shared a common intellectual heritage: Lossky had identified Askoldov’s father, A. A. Kozlov, the Leibnizian epistemologist, as one of his most important intellectual forebears. Both Askoldov and Lossky were part of the neo-Idealist tradition in Russian philosophy, as was I. I. Lapshin. However, according to RP, Askoldov did not teach psychology in 1916–17 or 1917–18 (though he did teach “Introduction to Philosophy” and “History of Ethics”). He moved to Kazan in 1918, and returned to Petrograd in 1920, where he resumed teaching at the Polytechnical Institute until the mid-1920s (Alekseev 1995). He was exiled in 1928. Of course, even if she did not study with Askoldov or Zelinsky, Rand read much Nietzsche on her own, and was also enraptured by the writings of the Nietzschean Russian Symbolist Aleksandr Blok, whom she characterized as her favorite poet. Blok gave regular readings of his work in Petrograd. In addition, one cannot discount the intellectual ties between Rand, Dostoyevsky (one of her favorite literary stylists), and Nietzsche. Nietzsche, in fact, wrote abstracts of many of Dostoyevsky’s works. Their common “existentialist” themes influenced the writings of E. I. Zamyatin, which were circulated in Petrograd literary circles in the early 1920s. On the similarities between Rand’s Anthem and the “dialectic path” in Zamyatin’s We, see Gimpelevich 1997. Thanks to Richard Shedenhelm for bringing this article to my attention.

  8. Aleksandr Ivanovich Vvedensky had also taught psychology between 1889 and 1912–13, but not between 1914–15 and 1917–18.

  9. Lapshin taught psychology in 1897–98, 1909–10, 1910–11, 1915–16, and 1917–18. He was one of the most important Russian philosophers of the period, who also taught such courses as “History of Pedagogical Theories” (1909–10); “History of Modern Philosophy” (1897–98, 1917–18); “History of Nineteenth-Century Philosophy” (1905–6, 1906–7, 1907–8, 1911–12); “History of Noveishaia Philosophy” (presumably late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century philosophy) (1912–13); “Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason” (1905–6, 1912–13); “Avenarius” (1907–8); “Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason” (a seminar, 1908–9); “Hegel” (1908–9); “Hegel’s Logic”(1917–18); “Noveishaia Russian Philosophy” (1908–9); “Bergson and Solovyov” (1911–12); and “Rickert, Cassirer, Husserl” (1915–16). All of this information found in RP; thanks to George Kline for relevant translations.

  10. Vvedensky also taught courses on the “History of Ancient Philosophy” (1896–97, 1907–8, 1909–10, 1911–12, 1915–16, and 1917–18), the “History of Modern Philosophy” (1898–99, 1908–9, 1910–11, 1912–13, 1915–16), the “History of Modern Philosophy Before Kant” (1907–8), and a special course on Plato and Aristotle (1905–6) (RP).

  11. Lossky also taught five different courses in logic (“Logic,” “Logical Exercises,” a proseminar on “Logic,” “Controversial Questions in Logic,” and a seminar on Mill’s Logic) between 1905–6 and 1912–13. But there is no record of him teaching Petrograd University logic courses after 1912–13 (RP).

  12. Further discussions with various principals suggests that Helene’s confusion may have derived from her focus on the name “Ayn Rand” rather than on “Alissa Rosenbaum.”

  13. Konecny’s work is extremely important. His forthcoming book deals with students at Leningrad University. In his dissertation, Konecny (1994, 31) provides a fine portrait of university life during the 1920s, a period in which the school had senior scholars, junior faculty members (privat-dotsenty), and teachers (prepodavateli), all of whom were at odds with one another politically. Konecny also pays attention to the 1924 student purge. Those in the social science departments had higher expulsion rates since most of the students came from “white-collar” families. In his work, Konecny refers to Rand’s account of student life, immortalized in We the Living (103 n. 124).

  14. Among those who were students and/or followers of Lossky, there were D. V. Boldyrev, who examined “knowledge and being” (Zenkovsky 1953, vol. 2, 918), L. Shein, and Wilhelm Goerdt. Konecny points out correctly (in a personal correspondence, 8 January 1999) that the introduction of curricular reforms in 1921 did not prevent students in 1922 from pursuing “‘non-Marxist’ topics with sympathetic professors, who paid lip service to party decrees but ignored them in private.” Konecny admits, however, that “it won’t be possible to find out whether Rand had this kind of relationship” with Lossky or any of her other teachers.

  15. Alekseev (1995) reports that Lossky gave courses at the so-called “People’s University” from 1919–21.

  16. It should be noted that while the Soviets exiled Lossky, their allowances for him in the 1921–22 year were extended somewhat even after his exile. When he settled in Czechoslovakia, which fell under Soviet domination after the fall of Nazi Germany, the Soviets allowed him to continue working. Toward the end of the 1940s, they invited him to lecture on Dostoyevsky at the Society of Soviet Patriots in Paris. This lecture and other essays were published in Sovietsky Patriot, leading to Lossky’s subsequent denunciation by the right-wing emigré press—just as he had been denounced formerly by the left-wingers at Leningrad State University. In the face of such attacks, Lossky emigrated to the United States. See Starchenko’s article “Nikolai Lossky” in Kuvakin 1994, 663.

  17. The interview was conducted for me, in French, by Jacqueline Balestier. Boris Lossky’s memory, unfortunately, is “not what it once was,” but, as he remarked, the “goodwill” remains. Thanks also to Philippe Chamy for speaking with Boris, and for arranging sessions with the interpreter.

  18. Lossky’s cou
rse offerings were quite diverse. They included “Introduction to Philosophy”; “History of Modern Philosophy”; “Contemporary Epistemology”; “Kant’s Critique of Judgment” (a seminar); “The Marburg School [of neo-Kantians]”; “Avenarius”; “Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel”; and “Leibniz’s Ethics and Theodicy” (RP).

  19. Michael Berliner (in Rand 1999) observes that when he found a series of “Russian-language booklets about movie stars” from the mid-1920s in Rand’s papers, he had assumed they were mere mementos. In preparing Rand’s lectures on nonfiction writing for publication, Robert Mayhew later told Berliner that Rand had referred to this series, and to her own monograph on Pola Negri (15). Her memory of the period was extraordinary. In discussing Rand’s movie diary (1922–29), Berliner observes too that the journal “provides information not only about her movie preferences but about other things as well. For example, it is the only means of determining where she was on certain dates, for she seemed to go to the movies whenever possible” (111). Given the intensity of her college education, it is interesting that Rand notes having seen only three movies in the 1922–24 period. It is in the last semester at the university, perhaps as her requisite courses dwindled, that Rand records having seen eighteen movies, from 1 March 1924 until her graduation on 15 July 1924. It appears that she went out to the movies the day before graduation, and the day after. See Rand 1999, 173–74. The volume (which I review in Sciabarra 1999a) includes facsimiles and translations of Pola Negri (originally published in 1925, in Leningrad and Moscow, under the name “A. Rosenbaum,” by the Cinematographic Publishing House of the Russian Federation) and Hollywood: American City of Movies (originally published in Leningrad in 1926, without the author’s permission, by Cinema Printing, which printed 15,000 copies). Thanks to Mimi Reisel Gladstein for providing me with this original publication information.

  20. As late as 1943, Lossky revisited this particular subject matter, teaching “History of Ancient Philosophy” at Bratislava University in Czechoslovakia.

  21. On this issue, Lester Hunt (1996) is among the most astute of the commentators on my Russian Radical theses. He argues, quite correctly, that my interpretation of Rand “is helped by an assumed connection with Lossky,” even though “it does not require it. Sciabarra claims that dialectic had a strong and widespread effect on the culture around her in those years.… In particular, it was widespread in the history department, in which Rand majored.… This is really his main argument, or rather half of it. The other half is that we can find the dialectical approach in her own works, and that looking for it sheds light on them” (53). See also Bradford 1996, which sees my overall historical thesis as “thorough,” “convincing,” and “overpowering” (40–41).

  22. On Russian intellectual history, see Lossky 1951; Kuvakian 1994. See also Zenkovsky 1953, which traces “the internal unity and dialectical connectedness in the development of Russian philosophy” (vol. 1, v).

  23. One of Zelinsky’s most important students was the Russian literary critic Michael Bakhtin, who, like Rand, was influenced by both Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky. Bakhtin attended St. Petersburg University during the First World War. He lived in Vitebsk during the 1920–24 period, but returned to Leningrad thereafter, where he forged a dialectical perspective on semiotics and interpersonal communication that has influenced such contemporary theorists as Baxter and Montgomery (1996). See also Curtis 1986.

  24. Adolf Furtwängler was the father of famed conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. Thanks to George Kline (personal correspondence, 24 January 1999) for this information.

  25. Almedingen (1941), who, in the early 1920s, had firsthand experience of the History Department at Petrograd University, provides an informative portrait of the university’s specialists in medieval studies. See chapter 6.

  26. It is of interest that the names Karsavin and Kareev (also spelled “Kareyev”) can be found in Rand’s We the Living. See above, 414 n. 37. Almedingen (1941) actually mentions Professor Karsavin, among others, at Petrograd University (204).

  27. Thanks to Peter Konecny for this information (personal correspondence, 29 January 1999). Konecny explains that several professors who taught at the school went to the university after the Revolution. Kline observes that these schools offered, in essence, higher education courses for women before women were fully accepted into the university.

  28. Tarle was later arrested in 1930 and tried in November and December as part of the “Industrial Party Trial.” L. Ramzin, a Moscow professor of thermodynamics, was the leader of the party, which had allegedly planned to sabotage the Soviet Union’s industrialization effort and to topple the government. Tarle was said to have been positioned to be the future government’s foreign minister. Like other senior academics, however, Tarle survived the trial, and was “rehabilitated” after 1932, in the Stalinist retreat from “radicalism” in the history profession. This “radical” historical professoriate, embodied by the Pokrovsky school from 1927 to 1932, was later denounced. Thanks to Peter Konecny (personal correspondence, 8 January 1999) for these points.

  29. These five books were Shkola i obshchestvo (Moscow, 2nd ed., 1918)—a translation of The School and Society (2nd rev. ed., 1915); Psikhologiia i pedagogika myshleniia (The psychology and pedagogy of thinking), Moscow, 2nd ed., 1919)—a Russian version of How We Think (1910); Vvedenie v filosofiiu vospitaniia (Introduction to the philosophy of education, Moscow, 1921)—presumably a translation of Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (1916); Shkoly buduschchego (Schools of the future, Moscow, 2nd ed., 1922), co-authored with Evelyn Dewey—a Russian version of Schools of Tomorrow (1915); Shkola i rebenok (Moscow, 1923)—a translation of The School and the Child (1907). Thanks to George Kline (personal correspondence, 29 November 1998; 24 January 1999) for this information. Kline consulted Iuri Mel’vil’s Amerikanskii pragmatizm (American pragmatism, Moscow, 1957). Mel’vil reports that The School and Society was translated by G. A. Luchinsky; Schools of Tomorrow was translated by R. Landsberg; and How We Think was translated under the editorship of Professor N. D. Vinogradov. Kline explains that “this is a standard formula for a translation done by one or several graduate students or others, and ‘edited’ by a professor” (personal correspondence, 24 January 1999).

  30.34 See, for instance, her essay on “The Comprachicos” in Rand (August–December 1970) in New Left, 187–239.

  31. Lapshin had taught this course in 1909–10, but given its presence so late in Rand’s college education, Lapshin had already been exiled. The course was also taught by P. I. Voznesensky, apparently a specialist in educational theory, at least three times (1897–98, 1905–6, and 1906–7), and Sergius Hessen in 1915–16, but he moved to the University of Tomsk in 1917, and emigrated in 1923 (Alekseev 1995). Thanks to George Kline (personal correspondence, 8 February 1999) for bringing the Alekseev volume to my attention and for translating the relevant information.

  32. In my own experience, I registered for a course of the exact same title as a New York University graduate student. Taught by the Marxist Bertell Ollman, it too was a course in dialectical method.

  33. See my discussion of this issue in Sciabarra 1998a, 149–52.

  34. The word “mediations” was originally translated in the text as “mediacies.” I owe the revised translation to George Kline, who consulted the original Russian source.

  35. Rand probably escaped the dogmatic, scientistic applications of dialectic to the natural sciences. This canonical—and controversial—extension of dialectics was not affected until after the publication of the first German and Russian editions of Engels’s Dialectics of Nature, published in 1925.

  APPENDIX II: THE RAND TRANSCRIPT, REVISITED (2005)

  1. I generally refer to the university as Petrograd State University, but sometimes as Leningrad State University—when this is the name used in the documents. It was previously the University of St. Petersburg, but became Petrograd State University from 1914–24, and thereafter Leningrad State
University from 1924–91, until the city and school returned to the St. Petersburg name.

  2. This dossier was secured through Anne C. Heller, who at the time I wrote this essay was working on Ayn Rand and the World She Made, a biography of the novelist and philosopher that was published in 2009 by Nan A. Talese / Doubleday (Heller 2009). I want to express my appreciation to Ms. Heller for sharing her discoveries with me; such generosity of spirit is a rare scholarly virtue. I would also like to express my appreciation to those who assisted me in the translation and analysis of the dossier and/or of earlier drafts of this paper, including especially George L. Kline and Blitz Information Services, as well as Michael David-Fox, Peter Konecny, and Bernice Rosenthal. The usual caveats apply.

  3. For his assistance in translating and analyzing this document, thanks especially to George L. Kline (personal correspondence, 5 May 2005).

  4. In this connection, it should be noted too that in the first drafts of We the Living, Rand mentions a number of courses taught at the university, quite clearly drawn from the courses she herself took, as documented in this list. Rand mentions courses in historical materialism, the history of socialist movements, the Constitution of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, Marxist theory, Greek philosophy, and the history of the Crusades—all of which she took while in attendance at the university (see Milgram 2012a, 7, 11). Scott McConnell (2012, 48) reports that Rand’s description of “Kira’s first year at university was practically ‘autobiographical, in the sense of background.’” Rand herself stated in her biographical interviews with Barbara Branden that she had been “somewhat reckless” in her overt anticommunism in her first year at university. The conditions of the student purge that Rand describes in We the Living were also autobiographical; Rand herself was expelled in December 1923 but was “later readmitted.” Federman (2012, 84 n. 24) tells us that Rand was actually “readmitted three months later” (March 1924), and that she graduated in July 1924. As I reported in Russian Radical, Rand escaped the purge by “sheer accident” (above, p. <72>