Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (18 page)

When Lossky learned of his dismissal from the university, he was devastated. Around the middle of August 1921, he came down with a gallstone illness. The doctors prescribed bed rest, and between September and December, Lossky spent most of his time in convalescence. Around the Christmas holidays, his health began to improve. Undeterred by threats from the Bolsheviks or heckling by Komsomoltsy in the audience, Lossky joined Sorokin, Grevs,
Karsavin
, and others in public forums that praised Christianity and the Kingdom of God.

But in January 1922, Lossky experienced a relapse in his illness. He lost weight, developed jaundice, and was on the verge of having gallbladder surgery. In March, on the day of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, Lossky went with his wife to donate some of their valuables to the Church. From the moment of their sacrifice, Lossky (1969) writes, his jaundice and his illness were cured (215–16).

The Bolshevik leadership was becoming more fearful of the continued strength exhibited by prerevolutionary scientists, writers, and other public figures. On 16 August 1922, Lossky was summoned to the offices of the Cheka. He thought it was in response to a passport inquiry he had made to travel to Czechoslovakia. Instead, he was arrested, along with other Petrograd scholars, including
Lapshin
and Karsavin. Under forced interrogation, Lossky was compelled to agree that he had been involved in counterrevolutionary activities that were punishable by death. Under Bolshevik reprieve, partly due to
Trotsky
’s intervention, the sentenced intellectuals were released on the condition that they would leave the country at once. They could travel with small amounts of linen and clothing and were instructed to leave their books behind. By 15 November 1922, Lossky, his wife, three sons, and his mother-in-law,
Maria Nikolaievna Stoiunina
, boarded a German steamer. Stopping in Berlin, the Losskys applied for and received visas allowing them into Czechoslovakia on 13 December 1922.

So, the question is, How could Lossky have taught Rand if he was barred from teaching at the university, and if he was intermittently sick throughout the period, only to be
exiled
by the end of 1922? Could it be that the relationship between Lossky and Alissa Rosenbaum was a product of Rand’s imagination?
⁵³

An assessment of all the available evidence in this perplexing case is not as damning to the integrity of Rand’s recollections as might appear at first glance. There are two basic possibilities: (1) Rand mistook, hallucinated, or lied about her contact with the distinguished professor; or (2) Lossky may have taught a course connected to Petrograd University that was not fully documented by school or personal records.

Let’s consider the circumstances of both Rand and Lossky:

In 1961, when Rand had told her future biographer of her encounters with Lossky, she had already achieved a worldwide following. Though she was not taken seriously by many academics, it is unlikely that the mere mention of Lossky’s name would have created a stir of excitement in the United States,
⁵⁴
where, until the latter part of 1961, the elderly professor had been living in relative obscurity. In fact, as I indicated in
Chapter 2
, Lossky had entered a French-Russian nursing home by October 1961. He was weak and very ill until his death in 1965.
⁵⁵

But any fabrication on the part of Rand could have been easily debunked by a search of the historical record. Except for this brief passage in the 1962 essay, duplicated, for the most part, in Branden’s 1986 biography, the Lossky-Rand experience has not been written about or discussed in any interviews, public forums, articles, or books. Although Rand’s recollection of her final examination experience with Lossky is predictably self-complimentary, it was
not
Rand’s style to bolster her credentials by fabrication, name-dropping, or by acknowledging a professor whose religious philosophy she would have adamantly opposed.

Barbara Branden (1986) writes: “During the years of my friendship with Ayn Rand, I was always impressed with the range and exactitude of her
memory
” (13). Branden never found Rand to make a mistake about a date or time and could not imagine that Rand would have fabricated the Lossky experience.
⁵⁶
In fact, Branden claims that although Rand’s recollections of other teachers were partial and incomplete, Lossky remained “very memorable.”
⁵⁷
There were no other professors whom Rand acknowledged as having made an impact on her in any positive way.
⁵⁸
Furthermore, Branden argues, Rand seemed to know the ancient philosophers very well. What she gained from this single course was enormous.
⁵⁹

I find it very difficult to believe that Rand was mistaken or that she lied about her experiences with the celebrated professor.
Lossky’s
circumstances, however, are somewhat more complex. Though Lossky’s son, Boris, characterizes the relationship between his father and Rand as quite possibly historical fiction, he makes “an extenuating caution in this judgment.”
⁶⁰
Lossky’s appointment to the Institute of Scientific Research on the fringe of the university was different from most. The Council allowed
Lossky to teach philosophical disciplines at the Institute with the provision that they not be tainted with spiritualist ideology. He could have lectured in logic, epistemology, psychology, and similar areas of study. Quite possibly among these other areas would have been a course in ancient philosophy, or a course in epistemology, surveying Plato, Aristotle, and other classical thinkers. Lossky would have lectured his students throughout the semester and followed the traditional procedure of testing his students’ proficiency by written and oral examination. In this manner, the students would have received credit for the course, even though it was offered at the annex (B. Lossky, 29 May–4 June 1992C).

But to speculate on Lossky’s activities at the Institute of Scientific Research poses a further problem: the courses are untraceable. Any such “elective” course, taught by a censured professor at the university annex, would not have received “official” academic visibility. Alissa Rosenbaum must have been aware of Lossky’s eminent reputation as an exceptional educator, since he had taught at the
Stoiunin Gymnasium
. She might have been pleasantly surprised to discover him at the Petrograd annex. She would have had to make a deliberate, conscious decision to enroll not merely in
a
philosophy course, but specifically in
Lossky’s
class. She would have needed permission to attend his lectures. The considerable effort she would have expended to arrange this suggests that she knew of Lossky’s reputation as a brilliant philosopher or, perhaps, as a dedicated anticommunist. Boris Lossky does not deny these possibilities. Unfortunately, there are no institute listings in the family “red book” of Lossky’s publication and pedagogical activities (B. Lossky, 27 October 1992C).

Another aspect of Barbara Branden’s passage might provide a clue to the peculiar circumstances surrounding Lossky and Rand. Rand’s recollections of her oral examinations in the spring indicate that she went to Lossky’s home, rather than to an office or university classroom. This would have been unusual, but entirely within the realm of possibilities, given the appalling conditions at the university and its related institutes. Boris remembers that there was an acute shortage of firewood. It was so cold at the university that the office ink would freeze up (B. Lossky 1991, 77). The general lack of fuel led his father to schedule a number of student meetings in the enlarged dining room of his residence. These meetings may have been more frequent due to Lossky’s illness, which kept him at home, intermittently, from the fall of 1921 through March of 1922. Final examinations were held in June. Boris Lossky recollects that several of his father’s students visited their home during the period in question to discuss philosophy. He does not remember seeing a long line of nervous students waiting outside
his father’s study in the spring, nor does he remember Alissa Rosenbaum (B. Lossky, 29 May–4 June 1992C).

Aside from the unlikely possibility that Rand lied, one of the worst-case scenarios, then, is that she colored her recollections of the spring examination with a certain theatricality. There is another hypothesis that one could suggest: Rand may have remembered the examination incident perfectly, but not which professor was involved.
⁶¹
But I doubt this, given Barbara Branden’s insistence that Rand’s recollections of Lossky were “very
memorable
.” This is not to imply that Rand could never make a mistake; there is evidence that Rand did not remember every detail and date correctly. For instance, in my discussion of her relationship with the
Nabokov
sister, I discovered that Rand was mistaken regarding the date of the Nabokovs’ departure from Russia. Boris Lossky also questions a number of Rand’s reminiscences. Having read Branden’s biography, he suggests for instance, that she slightly exaggerated the harshness of the 1917 Petrograd winter. He also notes some discrepancies in Rand’s recollections of particular dates caused by the differences between the “old style” and “new style” calendars.
⁶²

But discrepancies in dates or temperatures are minor compared to a mistake in the recollection of a human being. Given the extenuating circumstances surrounding Lossky’s annex activities, it is my conviction that Rand has accurately described an actual event. Though I cannot prove this judgment, I firmly believe that it is the best explanation of the facts. The evidence suggests that Rand genuinely appreciated the privilege of studying with such a distinguished scholar. She remembers that in her freshman year at Petrograd, “many students and professors were fairly open.” After the government crackdown, “all the better professors from prerevolutionary times were exiled to Europe.”
⁶³
Lossky was one of them. By another “accident” of historical circumstance, young Alissa Rosenbaum had been among the very last students taught by Lossky in his native land.

A REIGN OF TERROR

But Lossky was not alone in his fate. Academic freedom was slowly eradicated in the years after the
Revolution
. The government had created
rabfaks
(workers’ colleges), which offered workers a kind of general equivalency diploma in preparation for attending the university. The professors were told to pass these students even if they fell below established academic standards (Fitzpatrick 1979, 65).

This was not the only hardship university academics faced in Petrograd. Typhus, influenza, pneumonia, cholera, and starvation were becoming commonplace.
Sorokin
recalls that in the cafeterias of Petrograd, discussion was monopolized by reports of secret police arrests and
executions
. Some scholars chose suicide. Faculty meetings became ongoing memorials to the dead. The rector of Petrograd University asked his colleagues not to die so quickly because there was a lack of coffins and graves. In time, coffins had to be rented to transport bodies to the collective ditches. Sorokin ([1924] 1950) remarked: “Not even in death can we escape Communism!” (231).

In the face of such inhumanity, and in the aftermath of the NEP, new liberal scholarly journals were founded. Satirical writings, such as
Zamiatin
’s
We
, began to circulate. Monuments to socialism and to Marx were desecrated, and many people returned to the Church. The Central Committee of the Communist Party feared the “growing influence of a revitalized bourgeois ideology” and chose “to apply decisive measures of struggle against this evil.”
⁶⁴
The expulsion of the intellectuals was the first step in the ideological “cleansing” of Soviet education. In addition to Lossky, more than one hundred leading Russian intellectuals and philosophers were
exiled
, including Aikhenvald, Alekseyev, Berdyaev, Bulgakov, Frank, Gurvich, Ilyin, Izgoyev, Karsavin, Kistyakovsky, Kizevetter, Lapshin, Melgunov, Myakotin, Novikov, Osgorgin, Ovchinnikov, Peshekhonov, Prokopovich, Sorokin, Stepun, Stratonov, Troshin, Vysheslavtsev, Yasinsky, and Yuskova. Anti-Marxist philosophical activity was declared illegal.
⁶⁵

Academic independence at Petrograd University was suddenly crushed. University faculty meetings were forbidden, and noncommunist journals were suppressed. In the face of growing state repression, protest was both ineffective and dangerous. Alissa learned “that it was useless to attempt political protests in Soviet Russia.”
⁶⁶
At home, Alissa’s father, in league with other pharmacists, had attempted to reopen his chemist shop, only to face government nationalization of his business for a second time. The
Rosenbaum
family was starving.

Clashes between communist and noncommunist students became more violent. Eventually, a
purge
commission was established to remove nonproletarians from the student council and from the university at large. The student purge began in Alissa Rosenbaum’s senior year, two months before her graduation from the newly renamed University of Leningrad. She would reconstruct the atmosphere of the student purge in her novel,
We the Living
.
In an effort to cleanse the university of “all socially undesirable persons,” the purge commission asked students to name the respective occupations of both parents before 1917, and from 1917 to 1921.
Trade union and Communist Party members were saved from the wrath of the commission (
We the Living
, 198). In later years, Alissa recollected that “great numbers of students were sent to Siberia, young boys and girls I knew.”
⁶⁷

The excesses of this purge were later denounced by Party leaders. Several Leningrad professors petitioned the authorities for the successful reinstatement of fifty purged students. In their efforts to democratize the student body, the authorities had merely shifted the student population from the social science colleges to the engineering schools.
Fitzpatrick
(1979) explains that the purge had the effect of “removing a great many of the women who had entered higher
education
after the revolution, since most of the women were of ‘bourgeois’ origin. In 1923/24, 38% of all students in higher education were women; but in 1928, with a smaller total number of students, women made up only 28%” (99).