Issue 20 | August 13,2012 | critic.co.nz

Reviewed by Walter Plinge
“ …too strong to compromise, but too weak to
withstand the pressure… who cannot bend, but
only break.”
Many Russian authors have a tortured
relationship with their motherland,
but for Russo-American author Ayn
Rand, Soviet Russia was an object of hatred.
This, her first novel, was written after she had
escaped to America, the promised “abroad” — a
word whispered in reverent tones throughout
the book.
The scene is 1920s post-revolutionary
Russia, and the family of Kira Aragounova are
returning to the city of Petrograd (St Petersburg)
following the final defeat of the White army by
the communist Reds. Kira’s father was a wealthy
industrialist prior to 1917, making their family
class enemies of the new Soviet state. The story
follows their struggle to avoid starvation in the
day-to-day depravations and insanities of the
new communism. But this is only the backdrop
to the real story Rand wants to tell.
Rand was not keen to write her first novel
about the Soviet state. Having only just escaped
Russia, and still painfully young for a novelist,
she felt unprepared to write about “adults”.
However, she became convinced that it was necessary
to deal with her Russian past in order to
move on from it and into her new life in America.
Rand begins with a standard plot: a young
and virtuous girl who must enslave herself to
the whims of a villain in order to save her heroic
lover. But from simple beginnings she entwines
within this love triangle an unforeseen twist
used to highlight the evil of destroying individuality
and free will. You can almost feel the young
WE THE LIvING
By ayn ranD
Rand (25 at the time) developing her ideas about
Russia, communism, philosophy, and love as she
works her way through the extensive chunks of
dialogue throughout the book.
We are asked to believe that if free, Kira’s
lover Leo Kovalensky would be a heroic and
virtuous man. And that his failings, in the
end his total failure, are not his fault, but the
result of throwing a man’s will up against the
authoritarian control of the Soviets. To me,
Leo seemed weak compared to the nobility to
anti-hero Andrei Taganov, who maintains his
values throughout, despite his pursuit of an
ignoble goal, and maintains his honesty when
he realises the folly of his endeavour. Yet as
you read, you can feel that readers would relate
to each man in different ways, seeing parts of
themselves in each and feeling for whichever
one they identify with.
The fascination of reading Rand’s earliest
work is tied into her later life. She is the
founder of the philosophy of objectivism,
which places the happiness and success
of the individual as the ultimate goal of
each person’s life. In a godless world, individuals
must ensure for themselves that
they achieve that which is “of their highest
reverence”. Any system of governance that
attempts to take that away, to tie the individual
to the greatness of the commune, creates
the greatest form of injustice.
Rand develops this new philosophy
throughout the book in the tragic conversations
between the protagonists about
what they stand to lose to the tyranny of
the communists: how inherent evil has
the power to destroy them or drive them to
destroy themselves. And while each of the
three protagonists travels a different path,
Books Editor | Josef Alton | books@critic.co.nz
none survives whole.
Rand’s tempo and pacing are at times
infuriating. She spends pages describing the
billowing smoke of the primus (admittedly
her chosen symbol of the depredations of the
age), while racing through moments of fraught
tension and obvious significance that could be
more fully developed. It reads like the work of
young author with much to say but a sense that
time enough to say it all may be running out.
Read this book if you are interested in love,
history, politics or philosophy. Its ideas are not
hidden, and of all Russians authors, Rand is the
easiest to read. It is the kind of book that allows
you to choose your own hero, and then seeks to
destroy them.
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