Earlier in 2022, I re-read Ayn Rand’s novel, “We the Living”. I was motivated, in part, by the war in Ukraine. I thought the novel might provide some insight into the Russian mind.
While reading it, I took fairly extensive notes on my phone, and by writing in the margins of the paper-back copy of the novel. Over time, I’d like to write a series of blog posts on various topics about it.
This first blog post is about several things that seemed slightly incongruous with Ayn Rand’s later writing and novels. Whether these can be reconciled with her later writing is an open question in my mind. Certainly, someone can change their mind on various issues, and I do not consider these things to be glaring contradictions with the fundamentals of her philosophy. It’s more like, when I re-read these things in “We The Living” this year, my “eyebrows went up” a bit.
Before I begin the current post, I want to put in a bit of a disclaimer: It’s entirely possible I’m misinterpreting what she is saying in various parts of the novel. In the context of a work of fiction or art, I believe “artistic license” can be proper, and that can explain some, or all, of this.
Any References to page numbers are to The Signet paper back, 1996 edition of “We The Living”, ISBN number 0-451-18784-9
“Rulers and Ruled”
At points in “We The Living”, I got the impression that Rand almost thought that there were “rulers” and “ruled” in the world. In other words, the sort of idea that there are people who are there to initiate physical force in order to keep other people in line. This would certainly be contrary to her later writings, especially in “Atlas Shrugged”, but also in such essays as “Man’s Rights” and “The Nature of Government”.
The best example of this is early in the novel, when some background information about the female protagonist, Kira is being given. There is some narrative and brief flashbacks giving an explanation of how Kira would have reactions to things and situations that her family regarded as “strange” or “abnormal”. For instance, it says that she “…seldom visited museums…” (Pg. 47), but when she would see construction, particularly of bridges she “…was certain to stop and stand watching, for hours…”(Pg. 47) Another such “incongruous feeling” Kira had is the following:
“When Galina Petrovna took her children to see a sad play depicting the sorrow of the serfs whom Czar Alexander II had magnanimously freed, Lydia [Kira’s very religious sister] sobbed over the plight of the humble kindly peasants cringing under a whip, while Kira sat tense, erect, eyes dark in ecstasy, watching the whip cracking expertly in the hand of a tall, young overseer.” (Pg. 47-48)
The scene involves Kira going with her family to see a play about the suffering of the serfs. These were people tied to the land, and required to work. They were little better than slaves. The only real difference being that the serfs could not be sold to another master, they belonged to whoever owned the land. Russia was one of the last countries to free the serfs, in 1861 under Tsar Alexander II. https://www.historytoday.com/archive/emancipation-russian-serfs-1861
Kira seems to have a sexual reaction to seeing this scene in the play. First, it’s noted that the person handling the whip is a “…tall, young overseer…”, who is presumably male. Additionally, Rand uses the word “ecstasy” to describe Kira’s reaction to this scene. Technically, I think “ecstasy” just means great happiness, but the use of that word combined with the fact that we are talking about a teenage girl watching a tall, young man, suggests sexual attraction to me. More specifically, it seems like she is sexually attracted to not just the young man, but his actions -in watching the whip crack expertly.
I think this scene could be interpreted in one of two ways. First, it could be seen as Kira likes the idea that the serfs were being kept in line with physical force, the whip, by a good-looking young man. Second, it could just be that she is sexually attracted to the display of skill by the young man, in using the whip, not necessarily what he is using the whip on. (In this case, people.) This second interpretation takes into account the early scenes described just before it, in which Kira liked to watch road and bridge construction, and (presumably) liked watching the men displaying skill at construction, too. This second interpretation lines up better with Rand’s overall views on the role of productivity in life, as shown in her later writing. That said, I’m not 100% sure from the context that Ayn Rand didn’t mean my first interpretation: that Kira seems to believe that the serfs were not capable of following rules or law without being kept in line without some physical force being initiated against them, such as a whip. That is, that there are some people who are meant to be ruled.
Another example of this “rulers and ruled” attitude is when Rand describes Kira’s attitude about physical labor:
“From somewhere in the aristocratic Middle Ages, Kira had inherited the conviction that labor and effort were ignoble.” (Pg. 49)
First, I thought this was an interesting way to phrase this. How, exactly, does one “inherit” a conviction? Does Rand mean she got this idea from her parents? It doesn’t seem so, because the earlier discussion of Kira’s background seems to show that she is very different from her family, and misunderstood by them. Is Rand speaking of genetic determinism here? Did Kira somehow get this attitude or idea from her genes? Or, is this just a way of saying Kira had, at some point, adopted an attitude from the Middle Ages that was still common, especially in Russia at that time? Second, how, exactly, does Kira think that labor and effort are “ignoble”, and how does that comport with Rand’s later views on productivity? I think what is meant here is that Kira thought that manual labor is ignoble, since the novel goes on from that scene to say that “…she had chosen a future of the hardest work and most demanding effort…” by choosing to be an engineer. (Pg. 50) Clearly, this idea, as understood by Rand’s later writings, would not be correct. Even very intellectually simplistic labor requires some degree of mental effort.
This attitude on work seems almost “Platonic” to me:
“…the ideally just city outlined in the Republic, Plato proposed a system of labor specialization, according to which individuals are assigned to one of three economic strata, based on their inborn abilities: the laboring or mercantile class, a class of auxiliaries charged with keeping the peace and defending the city, or the ruling class of ‘philosopher-kings’.” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/work-labor/
My understanding of Plato, and the Ancient Greeks in general, is they believed that there were some people born to do the manual labor, usually slaves, while there were others who were born to do the thinking. These are Plato’s “philosopher-kings”. Rand clearly and explicitly repudiated this notion in her later writings. See, for instance, the story of Robert Stadler, in Atlas Shrugged. This is why, like I said earlier, my “eyebrows went up”, metaphorically speaking , when I read this.
Abortion in “We The Living”
Perhaps because of what was going on in the courts and politically in 2022, I noted that the subject of abortion comes up a couple of times in “We The Living”. As far as I can remember, the topic never comes up in either “The Fountainhead” or “Atlas Shrugged”. The context in which she brought it up in “We The Living” left me wondering why Ayn Rand included this in the novel. For Ayn Rand, nothing in her fiction is an accident:
“Since art is a selective re-creation and since events are the building blocks of a novel, a writer who fails to exercise selectivity in regard to events defaults on the most important aspect of his art.
…A plot is a purposeful progression of logically connected events leading to the resolution of a climax. The word ‘purposeful’ in this definition has two applications: it applies to the author and to the characters of a novel. It demands that the author devise a logical structure of events….a sequence in which nothing is irrelevant, arbitrary or accidental…” (“Basic Principles of Literature”, The Romantic Manifesto, Ayn Rand)
Operating on the above quote, I assume that having abortion come up in the novel is not “arbitrary” or “accidental” on the part of Rand. She had a purpose there.
There are two ways abortion comes into the novel. (I’m not sure which occurs first now.) First, Kira and Leo get a neighbor living in their house assigned to them. This is a girl about Kira’s age, who is attending another local university. Her name is Marina Lavrova, and she is introduced at Page 177 in the book I was reading. (Signet paperback, 1996 edition of “We The Living”, ISBN number 0-451-18784-9 )
Marina Lavrova’s nickname is “Marisha”, and that is how she is described throughout the rest of the book. She would go on to marry Kira’s cousin, Victor. Marisha is a card-carrying member of the Communist youth group, the Komsomol. Furthermore, her father has good “working class credentials”, having been a factory worker before the revolution, and having served time in the Tsar’s prison system for political agitation. Victor, Kira’s cousin had noticed that Kira and Leo had two rooms, and had told Marisha about it. At that time, Victor is trying to get into the Communist Party, and uses Marisha as a stepping-stone to that end. (Which is also why he marries her.) Although the law allowed Kira and Leo to have two rooms because they are not married, Marisha uses her Communist party card to overrule the law, and moves into the extra room.
Since they are living in such close proximity to one another, Kira knows some fairly intimate details about Marisha’s life. For instance, Kira notes that young men are staying overnight with Marisha, and that she is presumably sleeping with them. After some time passes, Marisha comes to Kira and asks her about how to get an abortion:
“Marisha came in when Kira was alone. Her little pouting mouth was swollen: ‘Citizen Argounova, what do you use to keep from having children?’
Kira looked at her, startled.
‘I’m afraid I’m in trouble,’ Marisha wailed. ‘It’s that damn louse Aleshka Ralenko. Said I’d be bourgeois if I didn’t let him…Said he’d be careful. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?’
Kira said she didn’t know.” (Pg. 183)
A couple of pages later, a scene occurs in which Kira tells a sick Marisha to clean the bathroom, indicating that she must have taken some sort of medication to induce abortion, or has otherwise obtained an abortion:
“’Citizen Lavrova, will you please clean the bathroom? There’s blood all over the floor.’
‘Leave me alone. I’m sick. Clean it yourself, if you’re so damn bourgeois about your bathroom.’
Marisha slammed the door, then opened it again, cautiously: ‘Citizen Argounova, you won’t tell your cousin [Victor] on me, will you? He doesn’t know about…my trouble. He’s -a gentleman.” (Pg. 185)
The second way abortion is brought up in “We The Living” is through the character of Vava Milovskaia, specifically, her father. Vava is introduced at Page 79, when she comes to visit Kira’s cousins and their parents, Vasili Ivanovich Dunaev and Maria Petrova. (Kira’s Aunt and Uncle, by way of her mother, who is the sister of Maria.) Kira is also visiting the Dunaev’s when Vava arrives to see Victor, who she is in love with. Unlike everyone else, Vava is wearing expensive clothing, and jewelry. Although Vava’s family is not in the Communist Party, her father is a medical doctor. It is explained in the book that, at that time, Doctors were still allowed to operate privately, and make money because a doctor was not viewed as “exploiting labor”. Basically, doctors can do their work without the need of any employees, and they are making money only through their own labor, and not by directing the work of others. (Don’t bother trying to make sense out of Marxist ideas.)
At Chapter 12, starting on Page 151, Kira goes to a party thrown by Vava at her parent’s house. During the course of the party, it is noted that Vava lives in (comparative) opulence. How was this possible?
“He was a doctor who specialized in gynecology. He had not been successful before the revolution; after the revolution, two facts had helped his rise: the fact that, as a doctor, he belonged to the ‘Free Professions’ and was not considered an exploiter, and the fact that he performed certain not strictly legal operations. Within a couple of years he had found himself suddenly the most prosperous member of his former circle and of many circles above.” (Pg. 158)
Since he’s a gynecologist, I’m certain the “not strictly legal operations” are abortions. Abortions were legalized in 1920 in Russia. The novel starts in 1922, so abortion was legal by then. However, Stalin again made abortion illegal in 1936. (https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-01-04/stalins-abortion-ban-soviet-union ) I would assume that Rand meant that Vava’s father had performed the “not strictly legal” abortions prior to legalization in 1920. This makes sense in light of the last sentence in the above quote, which implies that at least “a couple of years” had passed since he started performing illegal abortions, and that he had passed other people in wealth, over the years, as a result.
In both of these situations, abortion seems to be presented in a somewhat negative light.
Take the story of Marisha and her abortion. For Rand, all choices in a work of art have a purpose. Nothing is without a reason in a novel. So what was her reason for having Marisha get pregnant accidentally and then have to get an abortion? She didn’t have Kira, the protagonist, get pregnant, although Kira was also living with and having sex with Leo by this point on, presumably, a regular basis.
Was Rand saying here that communism encourages abortion/promiscuity? This seems like a possibility, since Marisha was pressured into having sex when she wasn’t ready. Aleshka Ralenko, the guy Marisha was sleeping with, said she’d be “bourgeois” if she didn’t let him penetrate her vaginally. Maybe Rand just wanted to show how someone uses Marxist rhetoric to rationalize getting what they want, such as convincing a girl to have sex when she isn’t ready?
I would assume the difference between Kira and Marisha is that the former was ready for sex and took responsibility for it. (This also raises another interesting question. There was no birth control pill at that time, so what were Kira and Leo using for birth control? Condoms? Diaphragm? Pull out method?) Marisha, on the other hand, was not ready for sex, and wasn’t using anything to prevent Aleshka from ejaculating into her.
It’s also possible Ayn Rand included the story of Marisha’s abortion to give some background information on her, since she eventually marries Victor, who doesn’t really love her, and she has an unhappy marriage. I could also see the scene between Kira and Marisha as just a way to have the two women grow closer together. Initially they do not like each other, but after this, Marisha and Kira seem on friendlier terms. By page 250 (Chapter 1 of Part II), the two young women smoke cigarettes together and enjoy friendly chit-chat. Marisha is one of only three Communists in the novel that Ayn Rand portrays in a fairly sympathetic manner -the other two being Andrei and Stepan Timoshinko. Also, interestingly, all three are either dead or miserable by the end. (Marisha survives, but is in a loveless marriage and very unhappy.)
I cannot help but get the impression that Ayn Rand is saying with the story of Marisha and the story of Vava’s gynecologist father that communism causes abortion. Given her later, express views on abortion, this seems incongruous. Is it possible Ayn Rand changed her view on abortion from the time that she wrote “We The Living?” The situations in which abortion come up in the novel seem to me, morally ambiguous at best. For instance, Vava’s father seems to take a certain joy in being able to “lord it over” the people who used to be wealthier and of a better social status than him. At the party Kira attends at Vava’s house, the point of view switches to the doctor’s perspective:
“…he relished the feeling of a patron and benefactor to the children of those before whom he had bowed in the old days, the children of the industrial magnate Argounov [Kira’s father], of Admiral Kovalensky [Leo’s father]. He made a mental note to donate some more to the Red Air Fleet in the morning.” (Pg. 158)
These are not good or admirable feelings he is having. (Or, at least, they are very mixed.) He isn’t just enjoying his success. He’s enjoying the fact that people that were once above him are now below him. Furthermore, he is going to donate money to the Soviet state, which he regards as having brought him into his new position and power. He not only benefited from the Bolshevik revolution, but he is glad it happened, and supports the system.
In summary, the way this issue is presented in “We The Living” leaves a “question mark” in my mind, that I do not currently know the answer to.
Kira’s Speech About Andrei, Life, and Atheism
The final “incongruity” that I noted in “We the Living” was Kira’s speech to Andrei about atheism and life:
“Do you believe in God, Andrei?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. But that’s a favorite question of mine. An upside-down question, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if I asked people whether they believed in life, they’d never understand what I meant. It’s a bad question. It can mean so much that it really means nothing. So I ask them if they believe in God. And if they say they do -then, I know they don’t believe in life.”
“Why?”
“Because, you see, God -whatever anyone chooses to call God -is one’s highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It’s a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it.”
“You’re a strange girl.”
“You see, you and I, we believe in life. But you want to fight for it, to kill for it, even to die -for life. I only want to live it.” (Pg. 117)
Most of this quote is “spot on” with the rest of Ayn Rand’s later, express philosophy. The last two sentences seem more difficult to reconcile. Here, Kira is speaking of Andrei, who is the “good communist” in the novel. (Incidentally, Andrei is my favorite character from the novel. I can completely relate to the unrequited love he suffers from, as most men probably can.) Rand thought communism, and the people who preached it, were anti-life:
“‘You who are innocent enough to believe that the forces let loose in your world today are moved by greed for material plunder—the mystics’ scramble for spoils is only a screen to conceal from their mind the nature of their motive. Wealth is a means of human life, and they clamor for wealth in imitation of living beings, to pretend to themselves that they desire to live, but their swinish indulgence in plundered luxury is not enjoyment, it is escape.’ …‘You who’ve never grasped the nature of evil, you who describe them as ‘misguided idealists’—may the God you invented forgive you!—they are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.’… ‘Death is the premise at the root of their theories, death is the goal of their actions in practice….’” (Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, emphasis added.)
I heard a recording of Ayn Rand where she said there was no such thing as an “honest communist”, and in answering a follow up question, that she “stretched the truth” with Andrei in “We The Living” for purposes of fiction. (I think this is fine, since I believe in “artistic license”, as I said.) She said something about Andrei growing up poor and in a backwards country, which somewhat excused it, but basically didn’t think such a person could exist in real life.
It’s possible Kira was just talking about Andrei, in particular, and not communists in general, but that could be misconstrued, pretty easily, to seem to say something positive about communism. I will say that in the wider context of the novel, that is not what was meant. For instance, Rand also has the following earlier exchange between Kira and Andrei:
“I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say, as so many of our enemies do, that you admire our ideals, but loathe our methods.” (Andrei)
“I loathe your ideals.” (Kira) (Pg. 89)
Ayn Rand already had deep, philosophical, disagreements with the fundamental morality of communism, and not just with some of its nastier practices. She clearly already understood that the issue was deeper than politics, and reached down to morality. Nonetheless, given Rand’s staunch anticommunism, I wonder if she ever regretted including a description of a communist as “believing in life”, as Kira claimed in the above quote?
These were the three things that raised questions in my mind because they are not obviously reconcilable, to me, with some things that Rand wrote later. But, keep in mind that I’m just some guy on the Internet, with no special knowledge of literature, Ayn Rand, or of fiction writing, so I’d love to hear from someone else who has thought about any of this.