Brief biography of Ayn Rand. History Last years of life

Introduction. The Significance of Ayn Rand The year 2009 began, and the dire consequences of the financial crisis were evident everywhere. The first shock has already passed, but it hasn’t gotten any easier. The search for those responsible was in full swing. I was collecting materials for a magazine article about Timothy Geithner, just

Ayn Rand Freedom Atlanta Although she was born in Russia, her name is practically unknown in our country, meanwhile in the West she is considered one of the most influential writers and thinkers of the second half of the last century. According to opinion polls, her main book

Ayn Rand “Atlas Shrugged” 1957 Ayn Rand (February 2, 1905 – March 6, 1982) is an American writer of Russian origin and philosopher, creator of the philosophical movement of objectivism. “Atlas Shrugged” is the fourth and last

Ayn Rand's worship of the selfishness and individualism inherent in free enterprise made her the symbolic mother of Objectivism (the philosophy of rational selfishness) and the Liberty Party (an anti-government political party). Her reverence for the woman's lifestyle and philosophy was demonstrated at her 1982 funeral ceremony in New York, where flowers alone included a giant image of a dollar sign as a symbol of her deification of the capitalist lifestyle. Even while dying, Ayn Rand stubbornly insisted that “rational egoism” was the only true metaphysical system worth striving for. She was a creative genius of the first magnitude and had a tremendous influence on the American political system, scientists, philosophers and the greatest individuals in the world of free enterprise. Her influence was evident through her inspired writings and constant lecture practice, including her two best-selling books presenting man as the "ideal of man" and analyzing man as a "rational entity."

PERSONAL LIFE HISTORY

Ayn Rand was born on February 2, 1905 in St. Petersburg, the city of Catherine the Great, in Russia. She grew up in an atmosphere of artistic splendor and the Orthodox heritage of her idol, Catherine the Great. She was the first child in the family of the Jewish merchant Fronz, whom she adored, and his annoying wife Anna, whom she hated. Named Alice Rosenbaum, Ayn Rand was the first of three daughters. She was a delightful child who learned to read and write at the age of four, during the period when Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin were revolutionizing her home country. Although her views were diametrically opposed to the philosophy of the system in which she grew up, Ayn Rand became a typical product of that system. She grew up as an introverted child for whom books were a refuge. She fell in love with French novels before she was ten years old, and Victor Hugo became her favorite writer. She decided to become a writer when she was nine, and said in classic Promethean style: "I will write about what people should be, not what they are." Rand's favorite novel was Les Misérables, and one of her first favorite characters was Cyrus, the fearless heroine of French adventure novels.

Rand admits that it was at this early age that she began to think in eternal global terms and principles became an important part of her thinking. She says, "As I was thinking about ideas, I started asking myself why?" And again: “I don’t remember the origin of my stories, they came to me as a whole.” Describing herself as a child, Rand recalls being a hero worshiper. And she continues: “I was incredibly outraged at even the implication that a woman’s place was at home or that young ladies should remain young ladies.” She says: "I have always been for intellectual equality, but women as such did not interest me."

The First World War was a tragedy for nine-year-old Rand. St. Petersburg was under siege and most of her family were killed. When she was twelve, the Russian Revolution happened and her father lost everything. He became an ordinary worker, fighting for a piece of bread on the table and to save his family from the hated Reds. This left an indelible imprint on Rand's mind. When she was a teenager, she first heard the communist doctrine: “You must live for the country,” it was one of the most disgusting concepts she had ever heard. Since then, she has dedicated her life to proving this concept false. Rand claims that when she was thirteen, Victor Hugo influenced her more than anyone else, he was at an unattainable height above everyone else. His writings instilled in her a belief in the power of the printed word as an effective means for great achievements. Rand says: "Victor Hugo is the greatest writer in world literature... A person should not be exchanged for lesser values, either in books or in life."

This was the impetus for Rand's spiritual impulse to write novels of epic proportions about heroic deeds. At the age of seventeen, she openly declared to a shocked philosophy professor: “My philosophical views are not yet part of the history of philosophy. But they will become part of it.” He gave her the highest marks for her self-confidence and tenacity. Her college-going cousin read Nietzsche, whom Rand had never heard of before. He gave her one of his books, accompanied by the prophetic remark: “Here is someone you should read, because he will be the source of all your ideas.” Rand entered Leningrad University at age sixteen and graduated in 1924, when she was nineteen, with a degree in history. She then worked briefly as a museum tour guide before heading to Chicago for a two-week trip. She said goodbye to her family, deciding never to return. Rand recalls: “At that time, America seemed to me the freest country in the world, a country of individuals.”

Rand landed in New York speaking no English, armed only with a typewriter and a few personal items her mother had bought by selling the family jewels. The most inventive Russian immigrant chose the name Ayn and showed her creativity by adopting the brand name of her typewriter, Remington Rand, as her surname. After several months spent in Chicago, Rand went to Hollywood with the idea of ​​a career as an actress or screenwriter for cinema. She met the magnificent young actor Frank 0"Connor, whom she married in 1929. Part of the romantic adventure with 0"Connor was caused by the fact that her visa was catastrophically expiring. Their wedding satisfied immigration officials, who granted her American citizenship in 1931. The marriage would last fifty years, and Frank would become her friend, her attorney, her editor, but she would never take his last name. She had always wanted to become a famous writer and decided to keep her own surname as an affirmation of her future, even if that future famous surname turned out to be the name of a typewriter company.

Rand began writing and completed her first play, Attic Legends, in 1933. The following year it was staged on Broadway, where it did not last long. What prompted Rand to write her first novel, We the Living, published by Macmillan in 1936. This was her first work, condemning the totalitarian state and those who would sacrifice themselves in the name of this state. Rand then plunged into her first great novel, The Fountainhead, which she wrote over the course of four years. There were times when this work-obsessed woman spent thirty hours at the typewriter without a single break to eat or sleep.

Howard Roark, the protagonist of The Fountainhead, became a vehicle for the expression of Rand's philosophical doctrine. Roark became her first hero, representing the ideal man. The novel was based on the struggle between good and evil. Roark personified good, and the bureaucratic system represented evil. Rand's husband told reporters after The Fountainhead became a smash hit: "She's absolutely sincere... She never wondered if fame would come to her. The only question was how long it would take." Success came quickly. To everyone's delight, The Source was published in 1943. Reviews from many serious critics praised the work as an outstanding work. In a May 1943 book review, the New-York Times called her a writer of great power with a fine, simple mind and the ability to write brilliantly, magnificently and sharply. During 1945, the book made the national bestseller list twenty-six times, and Rand was commissioned to write the script for Harry Cooper. She took her path.

PROFESSIONAL HISTORY

Rand began writing "Hymn," eventually published in 1938, while still a teenager in St. Petersburg, Russia, knowing that she would never be able to finish and publish in Bolshevik Russia a novel that "proclaims selfishness." Work on the novel was put on hold until 1926, when she came to the United States. Her first jobs upon arrival were as an extra and screenwriter, then as a waitress during the Depression, and often as a secretary. She worked as a writer for hire to pay the bills while she splurged on writing two of her greatest novels, which were based on her Objectivist philosophy. Rand wrote We the Living (1936), Hymn (1938), The Fountainhead (1943), Atlas Shrugged (1957), For the New Intellectual (1961), The Virtue of Selfishness (1964) , "Philosophy: who needs it?" (1982). These seven books have sold thirty million copies over the past forty years. Literary critic Lauryn Purette wrote after the publication of The Fountainhead: "Good novels of ideas are very rare at any time. This is the only novel of ideas written by an American woman that I can remember."

Rand's two major works are now considered classics, although publishing industry experts initially refused to print them. The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were "too intellectual" and "not for the general public," according to the publishers, twelve of whom returned the Fountainhead manuscript. They argued that the book was too controversial, with an incredible storyline. Bobbs-Merrill eventually published the novel despite seeing no way of ever selling it. Over the next ten years, The Fountainhead sold four million copies and became a cult classic. The book was made into a film in 1949 in Hollywood starring Harry Cooper as Howard Roark, the "ideal man" who became a fictional character championing individualism and selfishness. Rand was convinced that the world lived according to tribal laws, which would inevitably turn man into a mediocre animal, driven by altruism and hedonism. This first significant work was directed against the spread of communism as the mortal enemy of the creative and innovative individual. According to Roark, “We are approaching a world in which we cannot afford to live.” In the book, Roark achieves a position of triumph as an iconoclastic symbol of the ideal man, who in one way or another is the role model for each of the thirteen heroines of our book.

Rand wrote the first line of Atlas Shrugged in 1946, the apocalyptic phrase “Who is John Galt?”, and then spent twelve years trying to answer that question in philosophical dialogue. John Galt's famous radio speech took two years to write and was five hundred thousand words long. True to her inimitable style, Rand did not allow Random House to cut a single word from the dialogue. She asked, “Would you abridge the Bible?” In fact, the hero of the book was “human consciousness,” which was highlighted through the main character John Galt, who was actually Rand’s transformed “second self.” "Atlas Shrugged" is aimed at the moral defense of capitalism and adherence to the demands of "reason." Rand preached: "Every man is free to rise as high as his desires and abilities will allow him; but only his own idea of ​​​​the limits of his development determines these limits."

Atlas Shrugged is not so much a novel as it is an epic myth that explains the philosophical errors of collectivist societies. John Galt expresses the entrepreneurial spirit of all mankind, most clearly expressed in his famous phrase: “I will never live for another man, and I will never ask another man to live for me.” The last thing Gault did was draw the almighty dollar sign in the sand and remark: “We are returning to peace.” Rand despised altruism and hedonism and supported Nietzsche's concept with the aphorism "The strong are called to conquer, and the weak are called to die." She gave John Galt all the traits of a perfect superman. He was irritated by “irreconcilable rationality,” “unhurt pride,” and “relentless realism.” Discussing capitalism, Galt says: "There is no anonymous achievement. There is no collective creation. Every step towards a great discovery bears the name of its creator... There was no collective achievement. There never was. There never will be. There can never be. There is no collective brain." Atlas Shrugged became a classic philosophical novel in the same sense that Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment became a classic psychological novel. Since 1957, it has sold more than five million copies and still sells more than 100 thousand copies every year.

After completing her monumental work, Atlas Shrugged, Rand spent the rest of her career defending and preaching the religion of Objectivism. The Ayn Rand Letter was written over many years to promote the achievements of Objectivism, and the Objectivist Bulletin is still in print. Today, texts from Rand's books are used in many courses in metaphysics and epistemology. Rand had a huge impact on society and capitalism and may have done more to bring down the Berlin Wall than all the politicians and bureaucrats in the world combined. The Nathaniel Branden Institute in New York became a center for Objectivist philosophy. In the 1960s and 1970s, Rand visited numerous universities, including Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, as a lecturer, promoting Objectivist philosophy.

Ayn Rand had an independent spirit, an obsessive work ethic, and the gift of macro vision. She was considered dogmatic in her beliefs and even arrogant in her relationships with other people. She was withdrawn and overly irritable. Rand became a hit on three Johnny Garson shows during 1967 and '68 and received the biggest mail in the history of NBC's late night shows. Mike Wallace was reluctant to interview Rand because of her reputation for being difficult. Rand refused to appear on television talk shows unless she was given assurances that only she would be interviewed, that there would be no editing, and that she would not be attacked using quotes from her opponents. Wallace said she captivated his entire team with her hypnotic personality. When he sent his people for a preliminary interview, "they all fell in love with her."

Rand loved Aristotle and accepted his aphorism: “Literature has greater philosophical value than history because history presents things as they are, while literature presents them as they could be and should be.” All her life, Rand was an anti-feminist, for whom man was the supreme being, but she considered Dany Taggert from the novel Atlas Shrugged to be the ideal woman. Rand felt that love is not self-sacrifice, but the deepest affirmation of your own needs and values. The person you love is necessary for your own happiness, and that is the greatest compliment, the most you can give him. Rand, when she was fourteen, decided that she was an atheist and wrote the following lines in her diary: “First, there is no reason to believe in God, because there is no evidence for this belief. Second, the concept of God is offensive and humiliating for man. It implies that the limit of possibilities is inaccessible to man, that he is a lower being, capable only of worshiping an ideal that he can never achieve."

Her philosophy is what characterizes her. In her own words, she herself is "that conception of man as a heroic being, whose moral end in life is his own happiness, whose fruitful achievement is the result of his noblest activity, and whose reason is his only deity."

BETWEEN FAMILY AND CAREER

In the twenties, Ayn Rand married Frank 0"Connor, a struggling actor, "because he was wonderful." He was the embodiment of the heroic image from her subconscious that she so admired. She decided to live among heroes, and 0"Connor was alive and a breathing Hollywood hero. He was six years older than her, and one of the added benefits of their marriage was that he gave her first a permanent visa and then American citizenship in 1931. She would later say that their wedding took place at gunpoint, held by Uncle Sam. 0"Connor became her editor and lifelong companion, even despite a thirteen-year affair with Nathaniel Branden. Rand became Branden's mentor after he was captivated by The Fountainhead as a young Canadian student at UCLA. Branden idolized Rand , and they grew closer and closer. The relationship between mentor and student became emotional and physical in 1954. According to Nathaniel's wife, Barbara Branden, Rand, a completely rational woman, appealed to her and her husband for a prudent resolution of this emotional crisis. Rand convinced them to accept this love affair in philosophical terms as an intellectually acceptable sexual relationship, beneficial to all parties. Branden was twenty-five years younger than Ayn and idolized her. He became a devoted follower of her writings and Rand's philosophy, considering their affair a sexual refuge for the two. kindred spirits, but you can look at it more deeply, as a metaphorical scene from the novel Atlas Shrugged that she concludes. Ayn was Dany Taggert, and Nathaniel was John Galt, and their fantasy came to life in the heart of capitalism, in Manhattan. In her description, Barbara Branden says of Rand: "Ayn never lived or loved in reality. It was theater or fantasy in her own imaginary world. Such was her connection with Branden."

Branden became Rand's lover, her confidant, and heir to the throne of Objectivism. He devoted his life to spreading this religion. He founded the extended Nathaniel Branden Institute dedicated to the study of Objectivism. He began publishing the Objectivism Newsletter to distribute philosophical works throughout the world. He published the Ayn Rand Bulletin in support of capitalism. Branden was the most responsible person in spreading the philosophy of Objectivism, which eventually became the credo of the Liberty party. In 1958, Branden fell in love with a younger woman and attempted a sensible break with Ayn. She was already sixty-three years old, and he was thirty-eight, but Rand saw in his refusal to continue the relationship a renunciation of the truth. Subconsciously, she still understood the true state of things. Age took its toll. Rand was destroyed. She never spoke to Branden again.

Career came first in Rand's life. She never expected to have children. There was absolutely no time for this. She devoted the years that could have been spent having children to realizing her lifelong dream - writing The Fountainhead. Soon after, in 1946, she wrote the line "Who is John Galt?", at which time she was forty-one years old, and she never wavered in her quest to complete her vision. Frank 0"Connor always supported her and followed her along her path in life, accepting all her conditions. To realize her childhood dream, Ayn Rand sacrificed everything: her family in Russia, her husband, her maternal nature. She said that she paid a small price , as it is certain that she fulfilled her childhood dream by creating heroes such as supermen who will remain classics in the world of literature and philosophy for centuries.

Ayn Rand was ridiculed and hated by most liberals and intellectuals. She deeply believed that the world is divided into "black and white and there is no gray. Good fights evil, and there is no justification for actions that we consider evil." The word "compromise" was not in her vocabulary. Philosophers loved her or hated her, but most never accepted her, and neither did literary circles, but her books were much more popular than those of those who reviled her. Of course, no one spoke of Rand with indifference. This perfect embodiment of the free enterprise spirit "challenged the traditions of two and a half thousand years" and continually displeased most religions, political systems and economic dogmas. Rand was dogmatic in her belief in the freedom of the individual to take risks and was at the forefront of those who took risks to change the status quo. This is what characterizes the creative geniuses of free enterprise and innovators. Ayn Rand is a prime example of the guru's philosophy and temperament required to compete in this world.

Rand died on March 6, 1982 in her beloved city of New York. The New-York Times wrote: "Ayn Rand's body lay next to the symbol she adopted as her own - a six-foot image of an American dollar sign." Rand's spirit of enlightened selfishness would have been fully realized if she had lived just eight more years to see the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Communist Party in Russia. Ayn Rand is destined to remain in history as a philosophical tribune of the capitalist system. Its significance for capitalism is similar to the significance of Karl Marx for communism. Her Atlas Shrugged will find its place alongside Marx's Communist Manifesto in universities and other abodes of knowledge whenever political and economic systems are discussed.

Ayn Rand was a complete "creative genius" and admired her heroine, Catherine the Great. She said of her childhood: “I thought I was the spitting image of Catherine.” And when she turned fifty-five, she said: “You know, I’m still waiting for the day” when I achieve everything that Catherine achieved. I believe that history will place Ayn Rand next to Catherine as one of the truly great Russian women who dared to challenge the world and who had the courage to come and change it.sheykh 06/09/2009 10:18:39

A vile person preaching a vile social philosophy. The result of the implementation of such ideas is the current state of many so-called third countries: neoliberal reforms in the spirit of Ayn Rand contributed to the degradation and even further lag of these countries. The global crisis has fully proven that selfishness, faith in the market as the only guarantor of democracy and prosperity, the futility of government intervention in the interests of social justice, the creative destruction of carefully built institutions and stable social communities, reducing the role of the state only to regulatory functions and to the minimum possible, etc. .e. what Ayn Rand and similar furious adherents of neoliberalism are calling for is regression and the shortest path to general collapse for at least non-Western countries

If
29.02.2012 10:37:27

every person aspired to become the same Personality as Ain - the world would be beautiful in its prosperity and life. If everyone learned to tell the truth to themselves and to people, and not to distort everything and everyone, Every Person would be an Individual, whose acquaintance would be an honor. And there would be no such slugs as those who wrote the two comments above...

Ayn Rand and Catherine the Great????
07.08.2012 10:28:31

Do not make me laugh! It’s strange that someone dares to call Rand “great” or something like that. She's just a political prostitute. Do you think she expresses this worldview on the pages of “The Source” and “Atlanta”? After all, we are talking here not just about altruism or egoism, capitalism or socialism - the plots of these works are much deeper and more disgusting than just reasoning, for example, about the inappropriateness of helping people in the absence of benefit. They are aimed at replacing human values ​​in order to create a “consumer society” - the very society that now exists in America and which they are so obsessively trying to build in our country. In "Atlanta" she denies and mocks the basic philosophical, theosophical and religious dogmas that have guided humanity for thousands of years and which taught goodness, mutual assistance, unity, harmony, spiritual balance, etc.
We are not talking about any particular religion - each of them has something to learn, and the basics are the presence of God, the concept of karma (a cause-and-effect relationship - thereby the need to do good so that it returns), the need for spiritual practice - be then prayer or meditation - the same everywhere. What does Rand think about this? “May God forgive you, whom you invented!” says Galt’s monologue in the third part of “Atlanta” - an interesting formulation - it means that Man is with a capital letter, and God is with a small letter, there is no God at all, he was “invented” by stupid people people to escape from “reality” - that’s what is imposed on the reader.
Well, everyone has their own opinion, and what to believe - religions and philosophies that have existed for several millennia or a “new” philosophy that appeared by order of the government and makes like-minded dummies out of people who are easy to control like puppets - is everyone’s personal choice!

Comment on the review from 08/07/2012 10:28:31
05.09.2012 07:17:26

“...that means Man is capitalized, and God is capitalized, there is no God at all, he was “invented” by stupid people in order to escape from “reality”...
Exactly. You got the idea right. In her case, man is a capital letter, and God (gods) and religion were invented, or better yet, invented by the notorious mystics, who were also mentioned in John Galt’s speech. Invented to destroy Homo Sapiens, and to obtain an unreasonable, blind, thoughtlessly “believing” blind man, who readily listens to everything that the mystics “preach” to him, considering them the ultimate truth (after all, they speak in the name of God and in his name) ... To deny the value of life on earth and appeal to obedience and humility (be patient, you will be rewarded in heaven), to affirm the original “depravity” of man by the very fact of birth and existence. It is these ideas that are called into question; moreover, their anti-human (cannibalistic) essence is proven.
Well, this - “In “Atlanta” she denies and mocks the basic philosophical, theosophical and religious dogmas that have guided humanity for millennia” - so in what conditions did humanity live during these millennia, while religions were strong??? Western society began to develop only when the influence of religions weakened, or an offshoot appeared that denied much in the dogmas of the main Christian religions - Protestantism. You, mystics, only dream of science disappearing, development stopping, industry and modern civilization collapsing, and the majority of the population again becoming illiterate, dark, ignorant and intimidated - then “heaven on earth” will come for you, you will again in fact. Where Reason dominates, there is no place for religion and other mysticism.
So who really are the “dummy puppets” - people who prefer to rely on reason, or blind believers who call themselves sheep and slaves and are unable to live without a shepherd???

Famous American writer and philosopher, creator of the philosophical movement of objectivism.

Ayn Rand (Alice Zinovievna Rosenbaum) was born in St. Petersburg in the family of pharmacist Zalman Wolf (Zinovy ​​Zakharovich) and his wife, dental technician Hana Berkovna (Anna Borisovna) Kaplan on January 20, 1905. Alice was the eldest among three daughters (Alice, Natalya and Nora ). Zinovy ​​Zakharovich was the manager of Alexander Klinge’s large pharmacy on Nevsky Prospekt and Znamenskaya Square. The family had an excellent apartment on the second floor of the mansion above the pharmacy.

Alice learned to read and write at the age of 4. I started writing short stories as a child. Alice studied at a girls' gymnasium.
In 1917, after the revolution in Russia, Zinovy ​​Rosenbaum's property was confiscated and the family moved to Crimea, where Alice graduated from school in Yevpatoria.

In 1921, Alice entered Petrograd University with a degree in social pedagogy for a three-year course combining history, philology and law. She graduated from the university in the spring of 1924. In 1925, Alice Rosenbaum’s first printed work, “Pola Negri,” was published - an essay on the work of a popular film actress.

In 1925, she received a visa to study in the United States and settled in Chicago with relatives. Her parents remained in Leningrad and both died during the siege during the Great Patriotic War. Both sisters also remained in the USSR. Alice's first love, a graduate of the Leningrad Technological Institute Lev Borisovich Bekkerman, was shot on May 6, 1937.

Alice remained in the USA and began working as an extra in Hollywood. She dreamed of becoming a writer. The four finished film scripts that she brought from Russia did not interest American film producers.

In 1929, she married film artist Frank O'Connor.

In 1927, the studio where Ayn Rand worked closed, and until 1932 she worked various temporary jobs: as a waitress, as a newspaper subscription saleswoman, and then as a costume designer at RKO Radio Pictures. In 1932, she managed to sell the script for “The Red Pawn” to the film company Universal Studios for $1,500, which was a very large sum at that time. This money allowed her to leave her job and focus on literary activities.

Rand wrote her first story in English, “The Husband I Bought,” in 1926, the first year of her life in the United States. The story was not published until 1984. In 1936 in America, and in 1937 in Great Britain, Ayn Rand’s first novel, “We the Living,” about the life of disenfranchised people in the USSR, was published. Rand wrote the novel over the course of 6 years, but readers did not show much interest in this book.

In 1937, she wrote a short story, “Anthem,” which was published in Great Britain in 1938. The second major novel, The Fountainhead, was published in 1943, and the third, Atlas Shrugged, in 1957. After Atlas, Rand began writing philosophical books: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966), For a New intellectual" (1961), "Introduction to the philosophy of knowledge of objectivism" (1979), "New Left: anti-industrial revolution" (1971), "Philosophy: who needs it" (1982), "The virtue of egoism" (1964) and many others, as well as lecture at American universities.

In the West, the name Rand is widely known as the creator of the philosophy of objectivism, based on the principles of reason, individualism, rational egoism and which is the intellectual justification of capitalist values ​​as opposed to socialism.
In a 1991 survey of 5,000 Book of the Month Club members conducted for the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club, Atlas Shrugged was voted the second most influential book after the Bible. life of the interviewed respondents. As of 2007, the total circulation of Atlanta was more than 6.5 million copies.

In the introductory article to an interview with Ayn Rand in Playboy magazine, there are the following remarks: “It is unusual that any novel could cause such a chain reaction, but it is absolutely surprising that this happened with a novel like Atlas Shrugged.” After all, this book is a monumental work about what happens when “thinking people” go on strike, has 1168 pages. It is replete with long, often complex philosophical arguments, and is as full of acutely unpopular ideas as Ayn Rand herself. Despite the book's success, the literary "establishment" considers the author an outsider. Critics were almost unanimous in either ignoring her work or condemning it. And among philosophers she is also an outcast, although Atlas is a philosophical work no less than a novel. At the mere mention of Rand's name, liberals begin to shake, but conservatives also shudder when she begins to speak. After all, Ayn Rand, whether we like it or not, is extremely unique. Her individuality is undeniable, irreversible and unyielding. She despises the leading trends in the development of modern American society; she doesn't like his politics, economics, attitudes towards sex, women, business, art or religion. In short, she declares without false modesty: “I challenge the cultural tradition of the last two and a half millennia.” And this is serious."

A number of organizations in the United States and other countries are engaged in the study and promotion of the literary and philosophical heritage of Ayn Rand. First of all, this is the Ayn Rand Institute in California. In Russia, despite several translations of her novels, Rand still remains a little-known writer and philosopher.

10 films were made based on the works and scripts of Ayn Rand.

One of the most famous writers in America, she was born on February 2, 1905 in the most beautiful city in the world and Russia - St. Petersburg in the family of a chemical goods dealer. A gifted, wayward and very self-confident child, he early became the intellectual pride of his family, relatives and friends.

Ayn Rand She began writing very early, creating her own fictional world, which was more interesting to her than the world of reality around her. At the age of nine, she first told herself that she wanted to become a writer.

In 1916, for the first time and for the rest of her life, she became interested in politics, joyfully meeting the February Revolution of 1917 and realizing herself as a citizen of Russia free from tsarist despotism. In the same year, also for the first time, political themes appeared in her stories, which she continued to write, as in childhood: her heroes fought either against the tsar or against communism. During these same years, she became acquainted with the work of V. Hugo, who, in her opinion, was the only writer who influenced her.

In the fall of 1918, the bankrupt Rosenbaums moved to Crimea, where Rand graduated from school and began teaching the basics of literacy to local Red Army soldiers. Soon the family returns to Petrograd and the future writer enters the university. While studying at the university, she met another writer - Friedrich Nietzsche, who also had a great influence on her. In the spring of 1924, she graduated from the university, and at the beginning of 1925, the family received an invitation from relatives to visit America. Before leaving, Rand manages to complete courses for those wishing to learn how to write film scripts, which was very useful to her in America, where she, one of the whole family, ended up in 1926.

Your new working life Ayn Rand starts as an extra in Hollywood, because... the four finished film scripts that she brought with her in the hope of attracting the interest of film producers turned out to be weak. In 1929, she married film artist Frank O'Connor. In 1930, she began work on her first novel, “We Are the Living.” This novel, she believed, was supposed to be a protest against the way of life in Russia and an introduction to its philosophy, the future philosophy of objectivism.

The anti-communist attitude of the writer is quite fully reflected in the novel, which was published in 1936 in America, and in 1937 in England. All the images of communists in it are villains and cynics, and the only comparison for all of post-revolutionary Russia is a cemetery. Nevertheless, for Americans the novel became a revelation, and some critics today believe that in its artistic embodiment, emotionality and transmission of “local color” it is Ayn Rand’s best novel. The appreciation of the novel inspired the writer, and in 1937 she completed the short story “Anthem,” which was published in England in 1938 and attracted attention with its unusual formulation of the problem of the individual and the collective. In the same year, Ayn Rand went to work in the studio of a famous American architect in order to better understand the real basis of the creative searches of her new hero, the architect Roark.

In 1939 Ayn Rand writes a stage version of her novel “We Are the Living,” which did not bring her success; in 1941, while working intensively on a new novel, she rejects the offer of twelve publishers to transfer the rights to publish the novel “” to the publisher Bobbs-Maryll, and returns to work again on film scripts.

“The Source” was published in 1943. If the novel “We Are the Living” ends, as it were, the “Russian period” of Ayn Rand’s work, the novel “The Source” is already a new, American theme, “a new American period of creativity. “The Source” is the first novel in American literature that can be called a novel of ideas, which led not only to readers’ interest in it, but also, no less, in the personality of the writer.

"The Fountainhead", although it is quite a long way from the previous novel, is essentially only a transitional stage to her most significant work, which was published in 1957, and is considered by most critics to be Ayn Rand's most significant and best work. This means that in “The Source” the writer has not yet found completely new ways of reflecting artistic reality, and has not yet created her own aesthetic system of values. In it, she uses the skills and cliches of the previous period, which only indicates that the problems that worried her from her youth did not find their highest expression in her work. A number of American researchers consider “The Source” as the result of the writer overcoming her passion for philosophy and Nietzsche’s heroes, which they are trying to prove by a comparative analysis of two editions of the novel “We Are the Living,” although it is known that the second edition appeared almost twenty years after the first edition. After the appearance of “Atlas Shrugged” Ayn Rand I didn’t want to return to artistic creativity anymore. We can add one more well-known fact - the last novel was very difficult for the writer. She wrote only one speech by John Galt for almost two years. What made her start writing a novel? Biographers of Ayn Rand, talking directly about the history of creation, highlight the following most fundamental points. The first is the possible need for Ayn Rand to once again explain to readers her socio-philosophical views, despite the fact that she considered them already well known to the reader. Her friends insisted on this, demanding continuation of the dialogue with the reader. The second is the need in the process of creating a novel to rely on one’s previous creative achievements, which made it possible to actually launch the entire complex mechanism of one’s multifaceted, multi-level and very lengthy novel.

Some critics believe that in relation to the themes of their major works Ayn Rand relied on her early work, as well as on film scripts, which she continued to work on while she was writing novels.

The first title of her novel is “Strike,” and this title is probably quite appropriate to the theme of the novel itself. It appeared under the influence of the writer’s opinion, expressed in numerous conversations in a narrow circle of friends. They insisted on continuing to introduce readers to the ideas of The Source because “the people need it.” Ayn Rand responded: "Oh, they are needy? What if I go on strike? What if all the creative minds in the whole world go on strike?" And after some time she added: “This could become the theme of a good novel.” Nevertheless, in terms of its artistic characteristics, all previous work Ayn Rand designed in a slightly different vein and did not contain analogues to her “Atlas”. Something close to it can only be seen in the above-mentioned story “Hymn”, where we can find both similar literary moves and a general solution to the ideological conflict of the work. As is known, Ayn Rand author of only three novels, one story, several short stories and film scripts. Their appearance has its own logic, which helps to understand why Ayn Rand stops working on works of art. The novel "We are the Living" is a purely realistic work on a specific topic; The novel "The Source" is a social novel with a large share of allegorical or, better, symbolic solutions. In this novel one can discern several features that in one way or another can be associated with utopia; the third novel, Atlas Shrugged, is a completely utopian work, although it also contains residual realistic solutions.

If in the novel “The Source” the problem of “secondary” ones was posed, i.e. the majority of people on earth who owe their existence to the “primary” ones, because they can live only due to their talent. The primary ones are thus implicitly placed in a position where humanity is obliged to highly value their work. What can happen if humanity, as happens and as has always happened historically, refuses to fulfill this “duty” - this is already the problem of Ayn Rand’s next novel, Atlas Shrugged. Thus, the last novel is an artistic consequence of the problem that is posed and artistically resolved in The Source. That is why Ayn Rand believed there was no need for further continuation of her literary work, and thus Atlas appeared purely outwardly only because the writer was struck by the image of the best part of humanity on strike - the intellectual salt of the earth.

If we take Ayn Rand’s work as a whole, then her perhaps the best and technically most advanced novel, Atlas Shrugged, embodied in a “dramatic” form all the most important provisions of Ayn Rand’s philosophy or, as it is also called, the philosophy of objectivism. It is not for nothing that the first wave of criticism, i.e. The most immediate and topical response to the literary work that appeared was more than unkind. Ayn Rand criticized by everyone: both on the right and on the left. Later responses were no longer so categorically negative; there were already references to the artistic merits of the book, the unusual character of its heroes, and the magnificent architectonics, which is quite fair, since we were talking about a novel with over a thousand pages.

Since the late fifties, Ayn Rand has been deeply involved in philosophy, releasing in various years such books as: “Capitalism: the unknown ideal”, 1966; “For the New Intellectual”, 1961; “Introduction to the philosophy of knowledge of objectivism”, 1979; “New Left: Anti-Industrial Revolution”, 1971; “Philosophy: who needs it,” 1982; “The Virtue of Selfishness,” 1964, the influence of which America still feels today. She becomes one of the most read and studied philosophers of the twentieth century. And although more than 30 million copies of her works have already been sold, their translation into many foreign languages ​​has been completed, interest in them does not wane.

The Library of Congress reports that its books, especially Atlas Shrugged, rank second in surveys of the most read books and the books that most influence Americans' life choices. Among her admirers are many of the most famous people in America.

Ayn Rand She herself admitted that it was impossible to develop her philosophical positions in the lifetime of one generation of people. At the same time, as many American critics admit, Ayn Rand was and remains essentially a Russian thinker. Like most of Russia's original thinkers, she was an artist of words, a social critic, a philosopher outside the framework of any known schools, a person whose ideas were always directed against the traditional antinomies of Western thought.

The socialists won the elections in the United States and now the government’s policy is aimed at “equal opportunities”: mediocre and worthless citizens will get richer at the expense of the talented and successful.

But as a result of severe pressure on business, the state’s economy is destroyed, and the best businessmen begin to disappear one after another under mysterious circumstances.

Society is plunging into apathy and chaos...

Source

For many years in a row, this novel by Ayn Rand has topped the bestseller list, becoming a classic for millions of readers around the world.

His heroes defend the right to freedom of creativity in a society where the highest value is “equal opportunities” for everyone. Howard Roark's actions are always extraordinary, because this is the only way to fight the dullness of the crowd and calculating careerism. People must be free from prejudice, public opinion, and negative emotions.

And that is why the book inspires, delights, gives faith in one’s own strength and purpose!

We are alive

Petrograd-Leningrad of the early 20s of the twentieth century. Three young people are trying to achieve their goals in the new Russia: Leo, a former aristocrat, Andrei, a hero of the Civil War, an ideological communist, and Kira, a young girl who dreams of becoming independent.

Each hero faces his own difficult choice, his own difficult test. How will the life of the characters in the novel turn out? Will they remain true to their ideals and be able to resist the state?

The knot of problems is only tightening...

The Virtue of Selfishness

The book “The Virtue of Selfishness” is a collection of essays by the American writer Ayn Rand, our former compatriot, written over the years. All articles are united by the theme of defending the concept of “reasonable egoism” as the ethical basis of a free society.

Responsibility, self-respect, reasonable individualism - this is the slogan used by the author, who believes in healthy egoism and denies altruism.

What values ​​must be put at the forefront so that people remain free, can develop and find happiness? What system can be considered moral? The author will tell you about this.

Ideal (collection)

“The Ideal” is a book written twice: first as a story, and then as a play back in 1934.

All Ideals have become the deepest philosophical narratives, the plot of which is built on the sublime physical and spiritual beauty of the young actress.

Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism does not lose its relevance and finds its fans all over the world.

Hymn

A story about the cruel confrontation between the faceless, soulless systemic “we” and the simple human “I”.

In this world, everything is decided and planned: the choice of barracks and portions of food, school and profession... There is no carefree “I” here - only a discolored and resigned “we”.

But human curiosity and an inquisitive mind can break down any walls. The seed of doubt has been sown. But what kind of results will it give?..

Returning a primitive. Anti-industrial revolution

Who does a modern school produce - bright, creative, independent professionals or dull, faceless, weak neurotics?

What is hidden behind such a beautiful name as “multiculturalism”: a noble attempt to make the world fairer or a concession to savagery?

What are the goals of green movements? What is actually hidden under slogans about protecting nature?

Ain Ride gives direct and uncompromising answers to all provocative questions.

Romantic manifesto. Philosophy of literature

In the publication “Romantic Manifesto. Philosophy of Literature,” the famous Ayn Rand tried to debunk the myth that art cannot be comprehended from a rational point of view.

You will be able to understand the connections between Jean Valjean, James Bond and Howard Roark, and you will probably radically change the way you look at romance literature, action films and horror films.

This work by Rand will open the curtain for you on the kitchen of writing and creativity in general.

Capitalism. An unfamiliar ideal

Ayn Rand is a thinker who was able to combine economics and politics with philosophy, the idea of ​​personality and rationalism.

She saw in them the embodiment of the moral ideals of the life of society and its individual members.

For Ayn Rand, capitalism is not a terrible enslaving and monstrous system, but a mechanism that proclaims freedom, individual rights and respect for other members of society.

Answers: About ethics, art, politics and economics

Ayn Rand is a famous American writer who fiercely promoted the ideas of capitalism, individual freedom, and limited government involvement.

While closely engaged in lecturing, at the end of all her speeches, Ayn Rand answered questions from the audience on the most pressing topics.