Ayn Rand Biography Hansen English I

Brief History of Communism in Russia In 1847, an international workers’ group asked Karl Marx, a German philosopher, to draw up a plan for their organization. The group was called the Communist League. Marx wrote a plan called The Manifesto of the Communist Party . Brief History of Communism in Russia

Marx envisioned a workers’ revolt followed by a kind of paradise where each person would work according to his or her ability and receive according to his or her need. Marx saw the final stage of his communist system being total worldwide economic equality. Karl Marx

The people that followed Marx’s thinking were called Socialists The people that followed Marx’s thinking were called Socialists. The Socialists split into two groups. The milder group wanted to bring about communism slowly by passing new laws. The other group (we’ll call them Communists) stuck to Marx’s original idea of a major worker revolt. The Communists

The Communists were a small extremist group compared to the total number of Socialists. They formed a political party in Russia called the Bolshevik Party , which was led by a man named Vladimir Lenin. Bolshevik Party

Russia at this time was being poorly managed by a Czarist government, ruled by Czar Nicholas II . Most of the Russian people were still underpaid workers on land owned by a small number of wealthy landlords.

Bolshevik Overthrow Czar In 1917 a revolution occurred in Russia. The Bolshevik Party successfully overthrew Czar Nicholas II. Besides Lenin, there were two other men who were leaders in the Bolshevik party: Leon Trotsky , a man who believed in using violence against his political enemies, and Joseph Stalin, a strong ruthless man. Bolshevik Overthrow Czar

In 1924, Lenin died, and there was a power struggle between Trotsky and Stalin. Stalin gained control and Trotsky was exiled from Russia and was later assassinated for speaking out against Stalin. He died from an ice pick stabbing. As the new Russian leader, Stalin deported to Siberia all those who did not agree with him. His secret police also used random arrests, torture, and mass executions to maintain his dictatorship. Anyone could be a victim of these killings, or “purges” for no apparent reason.

Bolsheviks take control The idealistic goals of Marx, had turned into a system that was in many ways more terrifying than the rule by the Czars. There was no freedom in the new system, which was based on military rule. Forced labor created wealth for a limited few, while the lives of most people changed very little or got worse. Terrorist police prevented uprisings by unhappy people. Bolsheviks take control

Totalitarianism…say that 5 times fast. The communist type of government that came about after the revolution in 1917 was “totalitarian.” Totalitarianism is when one party or group has total control of everything. Totalitarianism…say that 5 times fast.

Ayn Rand was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905. At age six she taught herself to read. At the age of nine she decided to make fiction writing her career. Thoroughly opposed to the mysticism and collectivism of Russian culture, she thought of herself as a European writer, especially after encountering Victor Hugo, the writer she most admired. Ayn Rand’s life…

During her high school years, she was eyewitness to the Bolshevik Revolution, which she denounced from the outset. In order to escape the fighting and tyranny, her family went to the Crimea, where she finished high school. The final Communist victory brought the confiscation of her father’s pharmacy and periods of near- starvation. When introduced to American history in her last year of high school, she immediately took America as her model of what a nation of free men could be.

In late 1925 she obtained permission to leave Soviet Russia for a visit to relatives in the United States. Although she told Soviet authorities that her visit would be short, she was determined never to return to Russia. She arrived in New York City in February 1926. She spent the next six months with her relatives in Chicago, obtained an extension to her visa, and then left for Hollywood to pursue a career as a screenwriter.

On Ayn Rand’s second day in Hollywood, Cecil B On Ayn Rand’s second day in Hollywood, Cecil B. DeMille saw her standing at the gate of his studio, offered her a ride to the set of his movie The King of Kings, and gave her a job, first as an extra, then as a script reader. During the next week at the studio, she met an actor, Frank O’Connor, whom she married in 1929; they were married until his death fifty years later.

After struggling for several years at various non-writing jobs, including one in the wardrobe department at the RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., she sold her first screenplay, “Red Pawn,” to Universal Pictures in 1932 Her first novel, We the Living, was completed in 1934 but published in 1936. The most autobiographical of her novels, it was based on her years under Soviet tyranny.

Her novel “Anthem” is called “Anti-utopian” meaning that the world is presented as the world actually is. She developed this fictional world from growing up during the time of the Bolshevik Party in communist Russia. Rand believed that economic progress depends upon freedom, that the un-coerced mind is the source of technology, prosperity and progress.

“Anthem” projects a completely collectivized society in which the word “I” no longer exists. It’s a story about the individual being swallowed by the collective. The novel also addresses how this can happen and what ideas people must first accept before a totalitarian society can take hold She also addresses the triumph of the individual’s independent spirit and those who reject collectivism.