Ayn Rand and the Russian Intelligentsia

Ayn Rand and the Russian Intelligentsia PDF Author: Derek Offord
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350283967
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
This book examines the writings of the American novelist Ayn Rand, especially The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), which Rand considered her definitive statement about the need for an unregulated free market in which superior humans could fully realize themselves by living for no-one but themselves. It explores Rand's conception of American identity, which exalted individualism and capitalism, and her solution for saving the modern American nation, which she believed was losing the spirit of its 18th- and 19th-century founders and frontiersmen, having been degraded morally and economically by the rampant socialism of the mid-20th-century world. Derek Offord crucially goes on to analyse how Rand's writings functioned as a vehicle in which she, a Russian-Jewish writer born in St Petersburg in 1905, engaged with ideas that had long animated the Russian intelligentsia. Her conception of human nature and of a utopian community capable of satisfying its needs; her reversal of conventional valuations of self-sacrifice and selfishness; her division of humans into an extraordinary minority and the ordinary mass; her comparison of competing civilizations – in all these areas, Offord argues that Rand drew on Russian debates and transposed them to a different context. Even the type of novel she writes, the novel of ideas, is informed by the polemical methods and habits of the Russian intelligentsia. The book concludes that her search for a brave new world continues to have topicality in the 21st century, with its populist critiques of liberal democracies and acrimonious debates about countries' moral, social, and economic priorities and their identities, inequalities, and social tensions.

Ayn Rand and the Russian Intelligentsia

Ayn Rand and the Russian Intelligentsia PDF Author: Derek Offord
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350283967
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Get Book

Book Description
This book examines the writings of the American novelist Ayn Rand, especially The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), which Rand considered her definitive statement about the need for an unregulated free market in which superior humans could fully realize themselves by living for no-one but themselves. It explores Rand's conception of American identity, which exalted individualism and capitalism, and her solution for saving the modern American nation, which she believed was losing the spirit of its 18th- and 19th-century founders and frontiersmen, having been degraded morally and economically by the rampant socialism of the mid-20th-century world. Derek Offord crucially goes on to analyse how Rand's writings functioned as a vehicle in which she, a Russian-Jewish writer born in St Petersburg in 1905, engaged with ideas that had long animated the Russian intelligentsia. Her conception of human nature and of a utopian community capable of satisfying its needs; her reversal of conventional valuations of self-sacrifice and selfishness; her division of humans into an extraordinary minority and the ordinary mass; her comparison of competing civilizations – in all these areas, Offord argues that Rand drew on Russian debates and transposed them to a different context. Even the type of novel she writes, the novel of ideas, is informed by the polemical methods and habits of the Russian intelligentsia. The book concludes that her search for a brave new world continues to have topicality in the 21st century, with its populist critiques of liberal democracies and acrimonious debates about countries' moral, social, and economic priorities and their identities, inequalities, and social tensions.

Nikolai Chernyshevskii and Ayn Rand

Nikolai Chernyshevskii and Ayn Rand PDF Author: Aaron Weinacht
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793634785
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
Nikolai Chernyshevskii and Ayn Rand: Russian Nihilism Travels to America argues that the core commitments of the nihilist movement of the 1860’s made their way to 20th century America via the thought of Ayn Rand. While mid-nineteenth-century Russian nihilism has generally been seen as part of a radical tradition that culminated in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the author argues that nihilism’s intellectual trajectory was in fact quite different. Analysis of such sources as Nikolai Chernyshevskii’s What is to Be Done? (1863) and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (1957), archival research in Rand’s papers, and broad attention to late-nineteenth century Russian intellectual history all lead the author to conclude that nihilism’s legacy is deeply implicated in one of America’s most widely-read philosophers of capitalism and libertarian freedom.

Ayn Rand and the Russian Intelligentsia

Ayn Rand and the Russian Intelligentsia PDF Author: Derek Offord
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350283932
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
This book examines the writings of the American novelist Ayn Rand, especially The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), which Rand considered her definitive statement about the need for an unregulated free market in which superior humans could fully realize themselves by living for no-one but themselves. It explores Rand's conception of American identity, which exalted individualism and capitalism, and her solution for saving the modern American nation, which she believed was losing the spirit of its 18th- and 19th-century founders and frontiersmen, having been degraded morally and economically by the rampant socialism of the mid-20th-century world. Derek Offord crucially goes on to analyse how Rand's writings functioned as a vehicle in which she, a Russian-Jewish writer born in St Petersburg in 1905, engaged with ideas that had long animated the Russian intelligentsia. Her conception of human nature and of a utopian community capable of satisfying its needs; her reversal of conventional valuations of self-sacrifice and selfishness; her division of humans into an extraordinary minority and the ordinary mass; her comparison of competing civilizations – in all these areas, Offord argues that Rand drew on Russian debates and transposed them to a different context. Even the type of novel she writes, the novel of ideas, is informed by the polemical methods and habits of the Russian intelligentsia. The book concludes that her search for a brave new world continues to have topicality in the 21st century, with its populist critiques of liberal democracies and acrimonious debates about countries' moral, social, and economic priorities and their identities, inequalities, and social tensions.

Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand PDF Author: Chris Matthew Sciabarra
Publisher: Penn State University Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
Chris Sciabarra views Rand's "Objectivism" as a rejection - and affirmation - of key elements in the Russian tradition. Born in Russia during the Silver Age, Rand was educated at Leningrad University and studied with N. O. Lossky. She absorbed a dialectical method of inquiry that profoundly influenced her literary and philosophic project. Her distinctive libertarian synthesis is presented as a major contribution to radical social theory.

For the New Intellectual

For the New Intellectual PDF Author: Ayn Rand
Publisher: Signet Book
ISBN: 9780451078070
Category : American essays
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
An essay followed by excerpts from four of the author's novels illustrating the philosophy she developed and named objectivism.

Ayn Rand and the World She Made

Ayn Rand and the World She Made PDF Author: Anne C. Heller
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385529465
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 593

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Book Description
Ayn Rand is best known as the author of the perennially bestselling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Altogether, more than 12 million copies of the two novels have been sold in the United States. The books have attracted three generations of readers, shaped the foundation of the Libertarian movement, and influenced White House economic policies throughout the Reagan years and beyond. A passionate advocate of laissez-faire capitalism and individual rights, Rand remains a powerful force in the political perceptions of Americans today. Yet twenty-five years after her death, her readers know little about her life.In this seminal biography, Anne C. Heller traces the controversial author’s life from her childhood in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution to her years as a screenwriter in Hollywood, the publication of her blockbuster novels, and the rise and fall of the cult that formed around her in the 1950s and 1960s. Throughout, Heller reveals previously unknown facts about Rand’s history and looks at Rand with new research and a fresh perspective. Based on original research in Russia, dozens of interviews with Rand’s acquaintances and former acolytes, and previously unexamined archives of tapes and letters, AYN RAND AND THE WORLD SHE MADE is a comprehensive and eye-opening portrait of one of the most significant and improbable figures of the twentieth century.

Ayn Rand and Song of Russia

Ayn Rand and Song of Russia PDF Author: Robert Mayhew
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810852761
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
In October 1947, more than twenty years after leaving Russia, Ayn Rand testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which was investigating communist infiltration of the motion picture industry. The focus of that testimony was Song of Russia, a 1944 pro-Soviet film that Rand decried for its unrealistic, absurdly flattering portrait of life in the communist country. Ayn Rand scholar Robert Mayhew focuses on this controversial period of American and Hollywood history by examining both the film and the furor surrounding Rand's HUAC testimony. His analysis provides the first detailed history of any of the pro-Soviet films to come out of 1940s Hollywood. Mayhew begins by offering a brief synopsis of the MGM film, followed by an account of its production, as well as its reception. Most significantly, Mayhew analyzes Rand's appearance before HUAC and discusses the response to her much-maligned testimony. By carefully scrutinizing this one episode in the history of communism and anti-communism in 1940s Hollywood, Mayhew presents a more accurate picture of those times and the issues surrounding them. His study allows for a re-evaluation of the role of communism in Hollywood, the nature of the HUAC, and even the Hollywood Ten. This book should be of interest to anyone interested in the life and thought of Ayn Rand, as well as to anyone interested in the history of Hollywood communism and of American film.

We the Living

We the Living PDF Author: Ayn Rand
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101137665
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
Ayn Rand's first published novel, a timeless story that explores the struggles of the individual against the state in Soviet Russia. First published in 1936, We the Living portrays the impact of the Russian Revolution on three human beings who demand the right to live their own lives and pursue their own happiness. It tells of a young woman’s passionate love, held like a fortress against the corrupting evil of a totalitarian state. We the Living is not a story of politics, but of the men and women who have to struggle for existence behind the Red banners and slogans. It is a picture of what those slogans do to human beings. What happens to the defiant ones? What happens to those who succumb? Against a vivid panorama of political revolution and personal revolt, Ayn Rand shows what the theory of socialism means in practice. Includes an Introduction and Afterword by Ayn Rand’s Philosophical Heir, Leonard Peikoff

How Bad Writing Destroyed the World

How Bad Writing Destroyed the World PDF Author: Adam Weiner
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501313118
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Literary history meets economic policy in this entertaining polemic on the ethical and potentially destructive power of terrible literature.

America’s Persecuted Minority

America’s Persecuted Minority PDF Author: Ayn Rand
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1789124204
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 46

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Book Description
America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business was a lecture delivered by Ayn Rand at the Ford Hall Forum, Boston, on December 17, 1961, and at Columbia University on February 15, 1962. Rand argues that “every ugly, brutal aspect of injustice toward racial or religious minorities is being practiced towards businessmen” under America’s antitrust laws. Rand catalogues the injustices of antitrust, decries the scapegoating of businessmen, analyzes particular cases, rejects antitrust laws as non-objective and calls for their ultimate repeal.