Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (2 page)

New historical scholarship has helped me situate Rand within the broader intellectual and political movements that have transformed America since the days of the New Deal. At once a novelist and a
philosopher, a moralist and a political theorist, a critic and an ideologue, Rand is difficult to categorize. She produced novels, plays, screenplays, cultural criticism, philosophic essays, political tracts, and commentary on current events. Almost everything she wrote was unfashionable. When artists embraced realism and modernism, she championed Romanticism. Implacably opposed to pragmatism, existentialism, and Freudian psychology, she offered instead Objectivism, an absolutist philosophical system that insisted on the primacy of reason and the existence of a knowable, objective reality. Though she was out of fashion, Rand was not without a tradition or a community. Rather than a lonely genius, she was a deeply engaged thinker, embedded in multiple networks of friends and foes, always driven relentlessly to comment upon and condemn the tide of events that flowed around her.

This book seeks to excavate a hidden Rand, one far more complex and contradictory than her public persona suggests. Although she preached unfettered individualism, the story I tell is one of Rand in relationship, both with the significant figures of her life and with the wider world, which appeared to her alternately as implacably hostile and full of limitless possibility. This approach helps reconcile the tensions that plagued Rand’s life and work. The most obvious contradiction lies on the surface: Rand was a rationalist philosopher who wrote romantic fiction. For all her fealty to reason, Rand was a woman subject to powerful, even overwhelming emotions. Her novels indulged Rand’s desire for adventure, beauty, and excitement, while Objectivism helped her frame, master, and explain her experiences in the world. Her dual career as a novelist and a philosopher let Rand express both her deep-seated need for control and her genuine belief in individualism and independence.

Despite Rand’s lifelong interest in current events, the escapist pleasures of fiction tugged always at the edges of her mind. When she stopped writing novels she continued to live in the imaginary worlds she had created, finding her characters as real and meaningful as the people she spent time with every day. Over time she retreated ever further into a universe of her own creation, joined there by a tight band of intimates who acknowledged her as their chosen leader. At first this closed world offered Rand the refuge she sought when her work was blasted by critics, who were often unfairly harsh and personal in their attacks. But Objectivism as a philosophy left no room for elaboration,
extension, or interpretation, and as a social world it excluded growth, change, or development. As a younger Rand might have predicted, a system so oppressive to individual variety had not long to prosper. A woman who tried to nurture herself exclusively on ideas, Rand would live and die subject to the dynamics of her own philosophy. The clash between her romantic and rational sides makes this not a tale of triumph, but a tragedy of sorts.

PART I
The Education of Ayn Rand, 1905–1943

Alisa Rosenbaum, Leningrad, Russia, 1925.

CHAPTER ONE
From Russia to Roosevelt

IT WAS A
wintry day in 1918 when the Red Guard pounded on the door of Zinovy Rosenbaum’s chemistry shop. The guards bore a seal of the State of Russia, which they nailed upon the door, signaling that it had been seized in the name of the people. Zinovy could at least be thankful the mad whirl of revolution had taken only his property, not his life. But his oldest daughter, Alisa, twelve at the time, burned with indignation. The shop was her father’s; he had worked for it, studied long hours at university, dispensed valued advice and medicines to his customers. Now in an instant it was gone, taken to benefit nameless, faceless peasants, strangers who could offer her father nothing in return. The soldiers had come in boots, carrying guns, making clear that resistance would mean death. Yet they had spoken the language of fairness and equality, their goal to build a better society for all. Watching, listening, absorbing, Alisa knew one thing for certain: those who invoked such lofty ideals were not to be trusted. Talk about helping others was only a thin cover for force and power. It was a lesson she would never forget.

Ayn Rand’s father, Zinovy Rosenbaum, was a self-made man. His bootstrap was a coveted space at Warsaw University, a privilege granted to only a few Jewish students. After earning a degree in chemistry, he established his own business in St. Petersburg. By the time of the Revolution he had ensconced his family in a large apartment on Nevsky Prospekt, a prominent address at the heart of the city. His educated and cultured wife, Anna, came from a wealthy and well-connected background. Her father was an expert tailor favored by the Russian Army, a position that helped shield their extended family against anti-Semitic violence.

Anna and Zinovy elevated Enlightenment European culture over their religious background. They observed the major Jewish holidays, holding a seder each year, but otherwise led largely secular lives. They spoke Russian at home and their three daughters took private lessons in French, German, gymnastics, and piano. They taught their eldest daughter, Alisa, born in 1905, that “culture, civilization, anything which is interesting . . . is abroad,” and refused to let her read Russian literature.
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In their urbane sophistication and secularism, the Rosenbaums were vastly different from the majority of Russian Jews, who inhabited shtetls in the Pale of Settlement. Regulated and restricted by the czar in their choice of occupation and residence, Russia’s Jews had found an unsteady berth in the empire until the 1880s, when a series of pogroms and newly restrictive laws touched off a wave of migration. Between 1897 and 1915 over a million Jews left Russia, most heading for the United States. Others emigrated to urban areas, where they had to officially register for residence. St. Petersburg’s Jewish community grew from 6,700 in 1869 to 35,000 in 1910, the year Alisa turned five.
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By any standard, Russian or Jewish, the Rosenbaums were an elite and privileged family. Alisa’s maternal grandparents were so wealthy, the children noted with awe, that when their grandmother needed a tissue she summoned a servant with a button on the wall.
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Alisa and her three sisters grew up with a cook, a governess, a nurse, and tutors. Their mother loved to entertain, and their handsome apartment was filled with relatives and friends drawn to her evening salons. The family spent each summer on the Crimean peninsula, a popular vacation spot for the affluent. When Alisa was nine they journeyed to Austria and Switzerland for six weeks.

Alisa’s childhood was dominated by her volatile mother. At a young age Alisa found herself ensnared in an intense family rivalry between Anna and her sister’s husband. Both families had three daughters and lived in the same apartment building. Her mother was delighted each time Alisa bested her cousins in reading, writing, or arithmetic, and showed her off before gatherings of friends and relatives. Privately she berated her eldest daughter for failing to make friends. Alisa was a lonely, alienated child. In new situations she was quiet and still, staring out remotely through her large dark eyes. Anna grew increasingly frustrated with Alisa’s withdrawn nature. “Why didn’t I like to play with others? Why didn’t I have any
girlfriends? That was kind of the nagging refrain,” Alisa remembered.
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At times Anna’s criticisms erupted into full-blown rage. In a “fit of temperament” she would lash out at her children, on one occasion breaking the legs of Alisa’s favorite doll and on another ripping up a prized photo of Alexander Kerensky. She declared openly that she had never wanted children, hated caring for them, and did so only because it was her duty.

Zinovy, a taciturn and passive man, did little to balance his mercurial wife. He worked diligently to support his family and retreated in his spare time to games of whist, a popular card game. Despite the clashes with her mother, Alisa knew she was unquestionably the family favorite. Her grandmother doted on her, showering her with trinkets and treats during each visit. Her younger sisters idolized her, and although her father remained in the background, as was customary for fathers in his time, Alisa sensed that he approved of her many accomplishments.

After extensive tutoring at home, Alisa enrolled in a progressive and academically rigorous gymnasium. During religion classes at her school, the Jewish girls were excused to the back of the room and left to entertain themselves.
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What really set Alisa apart was not her religion, but the same aloof temperament her mother found so troubling. Occasionally she would attract the interest of another girl, but she was never able to maintain a steady friendship. Her basic orientation to the world was simply too different. Alisa was serious and stern, uncomfortable with gossip, games, or the intrigues of popularity. “I would be bashful because I literally didn’t know what to talk to people about,” she recalled. Her classmates were a mystery to Alisa, who “didn’t give the right cues apparently.” Her only recourse was her intelligence. Her high marks at school enabled her to gain the respect, if not the affection, of her peers.
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Alisa’s perspective on her childhood was summarized in a composition she wrote as a young teen: “childhood is the worst period of one’s life.”

She survived these lonely years by recourse to fantasy, imagining herself akin to Catherine the Great, an outsider in the Russian court who had maneuvered her way to prominence. Like Catherine, Alisa saw herself as “a child of destiny.” “They don’t know it,” she thought, “but it’s up to me to demonstrate it.”
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She escaped into the French children’s magazines her mother proffered to help with her language studies. In their pages Alisa discovered stories rife with beautiful princesses, brave adventurers,
and daring warriors. Drawn into an imaginary universe of her own creation she began composing her own dramatic stories, often sitting in the back of her classroom writing instead of attending to the lessons.

Alisa’s most enthusiastic audience for these early stories were her two sisters. Nora, the youngest, shared her introversion and artistic inclinations. Her specialty was witty caricatures of her family that blended man and beast. Alisa and Nora were inseparable, calling themselves Dact I and Dact II, after the winged dinosaurs of Arthur Conan Doyle’s fantastic adventure story
The Lost World
.
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The middle sister, Natasha, a skilled pianist, was outgoing and social. Both Nora and Natasha shared a keen appreciation for their elder sister’s creativity, and at bedtime Alisa regaled them with her latest tales.

As the turmoil of Russia’s revolutionary years closed in around the Rosenbaums, the family was forced to forgo the luxuries that had marked Alisa’s childhood. Trips abroad and summer vacations receded into the distant past. Watching the disintegration of St. Petersburg, now renamed Petrograd, Anna convinced Zinovy they must relocate to Crimea. There, in czarist territory, he was able to open another shop, and the family’s situation stabilized briefly. Alisa, entering her teenage years, enrolled at the local school, where her superior city education made her an immediate star.

But Crimea was a short-lived refuge. Red and White Russians battled for control of the region, and the chaos spilled into Yevpatoria, where the Rosenbaums lived. Communist soldiers rampaged through the town, once again robbing Zinovy. Piece by piece the family sold Anna’s jewelry. Like a good peasant daughter, Alisa was put to work. She took a job teaching soldiers how to read.

In the middle of these bleak years Alisa unexpectedly broke through to her distant father. The connection was politics. Although forbidden to read the newspapers or talk about politics, she had followed the news of the Revolution with great interest. When Zinovy announced his departure for a political meeting one evening, Alisa boldly asked to accompany him. Surprised yet pleased, Zinovy agreed to take her, and afterward the two had their first real conversation. He listened to Alisa respectfully and offered his own opinions.

Zinovy was an anti-Communist and, as the mature Rand phrased it, “pro-individualist.” So was she. In her adventure stories heroic resisters struggling against the Soviet regime now replaced knights and
princesses. She filled her diary with invective against the Communists, further bolstered by her father’s position. Their new connection was a source of great joy for Alisa, who remembered it was “only after we began to be political allies that I really felt a real love for him. . . . ” She also discovered that her father had an “enormous approval of my intelligence,” which further confirmed her emerging sense of self.
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