Ayn Rand Interview: Objectivism, Capitalism, Philosophy, Virtue of Selfishness (1961)
Rand was born
Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum (
Russian: Али́са Зиновьевна Розенбаум) on
February 2, 1905, to a
Russian Jewish bourgeois family living in
Saint Petersburg. She was the eldest of the three daughters of Zinovy Zakharovich
Rosenbaum and his wife,
Anna Borisovna (née Kaplan), largely non-observant
Jews. Zinovy Rosenbaum was a successful pharmacist and businessman, eventually owning a pharmacy and the building in which it was located. With a passion for the liberal arts, Rand found school unchallenging, and said she began writing screenplays at the age of eight and novels at the age of ten. At the prestigious Stoiunina
Gymnasium, her closest friend was
Vladimir Nabokov's younger sister,
Olga. The two girls shared an intense interest in politics, and would engage in debates: while Olga Nabokov defended constitutional monarchy,
Alisa always supported republican ideals.[14][15] She was twelve at the time of the
February Revolution of 1917, during which she favored
Alexander Kerensky over
Tsar Nicholas II.
The subsequent
October Revolution and the rule of the Bolsheviks under
Vladimir Lenin disrupted the comfortable life the family had previously enjoyed. Her father's business was confiscated and the family displaced. They fled to the
Crimean Peninsula, which was initially under control of the
White Army during the
Russian Civil War. She later recalled that, while in high school, she determined that she was an atheist and that she valued reason above any other human virtue. After graduating from high school in the
Crimea at 16, Rand returned with her family to
Petrograd (as Saint Petersburg was renamed at that time), where they faced desperate conditions, on occasion nearly starving.[16][17]
After the
Russian Revolution, universities were opened to women, allowing Rand to be in the first group of women to enroll at Petrograd
State University,[18] where, at the age of only 16, she began her studies in the department of social pedagogy, majoring in history.[19] At the university she was introduced to the writings of
Aristotle and
Plato,[20] who would be her greatest influence and counter-influence, respectively.[21] A third figure whose philosophical works she studied heavily was
Friedrich Nietzsche.[22] Able to read
French,
German and Russian, Rand also discovered the writers
Fyodor Dostoevsky,
Victor Hugo,
Edmond Rostand, and
Friedrich Schiller, who became her perennial favorites.[23]
Along with many other "bourgeois" students, Rand was purged from the university shortly before graduating. However, after complaints from a group of visiting foreign scientists, many of the purged students were allowed to complete their work and graduate,[24] which Rand did in October
1924.[25] She subsequently studied for a year at the
State Technicum for
Screen Arts in
Leningrad. For one of her assignments, she wrote an essay about the
Polish actress
Pola Negri, which became her first published work.[26]
By this time she had decided her professional surname for writing would be Rand,[27] possibly as a
Cyrillic contraction of her birth surname,[28] and she adopted the first name Ayn, either from a
Finnish name or from the
Hebrew word
עין (ayin, meaning "eye").[29]
In the fall of 1925, Rand was granted a visa to visit
American relatives. She departed on
January 17, 1926
.[30] When she arrived in
New York City on
February 19, 1926, she was so impressed with the skyline of
Manhattan that she cried what she later called "tears of splendor".[31] Intent on staying in the
United States to become a screenwriter, she lived for a few months with relatives in
Chicago, one of whom owned a movie theater and allowed her to watch dozens of films for free. She then set out for
Hollywood, California.[32]
Initially, Rand struggled in
Hollywood and took odd jobs to pay her basic living expenses. A chance meeting with famed director
Cecil B. DeMille led to a job as an extra in his film
The King of Kings as well as subsequent work as a junior screenwriter.[33] While working on The King of Kings, she met an aspiring young actor,
Frank O'Connor; the two were married on April 15, 1929. Rand became an
American citizen in 1931.
Taking various jobs during the
1930s to support her writing, she worked for a time as the head of the costume department at
RKO Studios.[34] She made several attempts to bring her parents and sisters to the United States, but they were unable to acquire permission to emigrate.
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