Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (95 page)

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 course 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.

A
PPENDIX
II: T
HE
R
AND
TRANSCRIPT, R
EVISITED
(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).