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| We the living by Ayn Rand |
WE THE LIVING by Ayn Rand
| Author(s) |
Ayn Rand |
|---|
| Country |
United States |
| Language |
English |
| Genre(s) |
Historical Fiction, Semi-Autobiographic |
| Publisher |
Macmillan |
| Publication date |
1936 |
| Media type |
Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages |
464 Pages |
| ISBN |
978-0451187840 |
| OCLC Number |
34187185 |
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We the Living is the first novel published by the Russian-American novelist Ayn Rand. It was also Rand's first statement against communism. First published in 1936, it is a story of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Rand observes in the foreword to this book that
We the Living was the closest she would ever come to writing an autobiography. Her working title for the novel had been
Airtight. We the Living was first completed in 1934, but, despite support from H.L. Mencken,
who deemed it "a really excellent piece of work," it was rejected by several publishers until 1936, when George Platt Brett of Macmillan Publishing agreed to publish her book.
Brett said "he did not know if they would make money on it or not, but that it was a novel that should be published.
It has since sold more than 3 million copies.
Brief Summary:
The story takes place from 1922 to 1925, in post-revolutionary Russia. Kira Argounova, the protagonist of the story, is the younger daughter of a bourgeois
family. An independent spirit with a will to match, she rejects any
attempt by her family or the nascent Soviet State to cast her into a
mold. At the beginning of the story, Kira returns to Petrograd along with her family, after a prolonged exile due to the assault of the revolutionaries. Kira's father had been the owner of a textile factory, which had been seized and nationalized. The family, having given up all hopes of regaining their past possessions after the emphatic victories of the Red Army
in the last four years, is resigned to their fate, as they return to
the city in search of livelihood. They find, to their dismay, that their
home has likewise been seized, and converted to living quarters for
several families. Left with nowhere to go, the family moves into Kira's
aunt Marussia's apartment.
The severity of life in the newly Socialist
Russia is biting and cruel, especially for the people belonging to the
now-stigmatized middle class. Kira's uncle Vasili has also lost his
family business to the state, and has been forced to sell off his
possessions, one at a time, for money (which has lost much of its value
owing to steep inflation). Private enterprises have been strictly controlled, and licenses to run them allotted only to those "enjoying the trust" of the proletariat. Food is rationed.
Only laborers of nationalized businesses and students in state-run
educational institutions have access to ration cards. The family of five
survives on the ration cards allotted to the two younger members of the
family, who are students.
After a brief stay at Vasili's home, Kira's family manages to find
living quarters. Kira's father also manages to get a license to open a
textile shop, an establishment that is but a shadow of his old firm.
Life is excruciatingly difficult in these times. Rand portrays the bleak
scenarios by vivid descriptions of long queues, weary citizens and low
standards of living. (Everyone regularly cooks on a kerosene camp stove, usually a Swedish Primus stove, and the typical main course is millet, or whatever can be blended together.)
With some effort, Kira manages to register with the State and obtain
her Labor Book (which permits her to study and work). Kira also manages
to enroll in the Technological Institute, where she aspires to fulfill
her dream of becoming an engineer.
She plans to storm the male bastion of engineers, and show her prowess
by building structures like a lightweight aluminum bridge. Kira's
strength of resolve to fulfill her dream is asserted at various points
in the storyline. Becoming a highly competent engineer would be Kira's
carving for herself a niche in a society that has become characterless
and anonymous, and whose primary purpose in life has been reduced to
subsistence rather than excellence. At the Institute, Kira meets Andrei Taganov, a co-student, an idealistic Communist, and an officer in the G.P.U.,
the secret police of the Soviet Union. The two share a mutual respect
and admiration for each other in spite of their differing political
beliefs. Andrei and Kira develop a friendship that endures until the end
of the story.
In a chance encounter, Kira meets Leo Kovalensky
on a dark night in a seedy neighborhood. Leo is an extremely attractive
man with a free spirit matched only by Kira's. It's love at first sight
for Kira, and she unflinchingly throws herself at Leo. Leo, who
initially takes her to be a prostitute, is also strongly attracted to
her and promises to meet her again. Kira and Leo are shown to be united
by their desperate lives, and their lofty beliefs that ran counter to
what were being thrust on them by the State. After a couple of meetings,
when they share their deep contempt for the state of their lives, the
two plan to escape together from the land, on a clandestine mission
operated by secret ships.
The novel, from this point on, slowly cascades into a series of
catastrophes for Kira and Leo. They are caught while attempting to flee
the country, but escape imprisonment due to the generosity of a G.P.U.
official, Stepan Timoshenko, who had fought under the command of Leo's
father before the revolution. Kira leaves her parents' apartment and
moves into Leo's. The relationship between Kira and Leo, intense and
passionate in the beginning, begins to deteriorate under the weight of
their hardships, and because of their different reactions to these
hardships. Kira, who is an idealistic realist,
keeps her ideas and aspirations alive, but decides to go with the
system anyway, until she feels powerful enough to challenge it. Soon the
state decides to expel anyone of a bourgeois background. On the verge
of starvation, Kira finds work with the help of Andrei, enough to retain
her ration card. Leo, however, burdened by his class background, and
without any communist friend to help him, fails to find work, and sinks
slowly into indifference and depression. He contracts tuberculosis and
is prescribed treatment and recuperation in a sanatorium in Crimea in
the South. Kira's efforts to finance his treatment fail, and her
passionate appeals to the authorities to get State help for his stay at
the sanatorium fall on deaf ears.
Andrei, an equally important person in Kira's life, is portrayed by
Rand as a man of character, resolve, and an unassailable loyalty to his
party and ideology. Despite his political beliefs, Kira finds him to be
the one person she could trust, and with whom she could discuss her most
intimate thoughts and views. Not even Leo could fulfill that role for
her. Andrei's affection and respect for Kira knows no bounds, and it
slowly turns into love. Worried what this might do to their "beautiful
and rare" friendship, he starts avoiding Kira. Kira misses him, and
needs his help. Eventually when she confronts him in his house, Andrei
explains his avoidance of her and confesses his love for her. Kira is
dismayed at first, but recovers to find in it a way to finance Leo's
treatment. Reluctant, but in desperation, she feigns love for Andrei,
and agrees to become his mistress
in return for the promise of complete secrecy about their relationship.
Kira is never comfortable with what she was doing with her body, but is
even more frightened by "what she was doing to another man's soul".
The narrative reaches a climactic pace when Leo returns from Crimea,
cured of tuberculosis and healthy, but a changed man. Ignoring Kira's
protests, he opens a food store with the help of his morally bankrupt and rich friends, and a corrupt member of the Communist Party. The store is but a facade for illegal
speculation and trade. Andrei is tipped off about this venture by
Stepan Timoshenko, who commits suicide in despair at what is happening
to his Soviet Union, but only after depositing a key piece of evidence
with Andrei. Ignoring Kira's pleas, and unaware of her love for Leo,
Andrei starts investigating Leo's store. After a search at his house, he
arrests Leo for crimes against the State, which could carry a death
sentence. In the process, he finds out about Kira's relationship with
Leo. The ensuing confrontation between Andrei and Kira is perhaps the
most poignant scene in the story. In the end, both realize what they had
done to each other and how their passion and pretension had led them to
the destruction of what each had held in "the highest reverence".
Andrei decides to redress the situation, at least for Kira, and moves to
restore Leo to her, risking his own standing in the Party.
After Leo's release from the prison at Andrei's behest, the story
ends in tragedy for all the three. Andrei loses his position in the
Party, and shortly thereafter commits suicide. Kira, perhaps the only
genuine mourner at his State funeral, wonders if she had killed him.
Having lost any moral sense that he may have left, Leo leaves Kira to
begin a new life as a gigolo,
fulfilling the earlier portrayal of him as such by Kira's perceptive
cousin Irina (who has been sentenced to a long prison term for
associating with counter-revolutionaries). After Leo's departure, Kira
makes a final attempt to cross the border. When she is almost in sight
of freedom and liberation from her hellish life, she is shot by a border
guard and soon dies. Kira remains loyal to her love for Leo until the
end, and says at one point, "When a person dies, one does not stop
loving him, does one?
Revised Edition:
We the Living was not a commercial success when it was
published in 1936. Macmillan did not expect the novel to sell and set it
in movable type instead of making plates. Once the first printing of
3000 copies was exhausted, the novel was out of print. Rand's royalties
from the first American edition amounted to $100. There was also a
British publication, by Cassell in 1937.
When Rand's final novel,
Atlas Shrugged, became a best-seller, Random House decided to republish
We the Living.
In preparation for the new edition, Rand made some changes to the text.
In her Foreword to the 1959 edition, Rand declared that "In brief, all
the changes are merely editorial line changes."
Some of them have been taken to have philosophical significance. In the first edition,
Kira said to Andrei, "I loathe your ideals. I admire your methods." In
the second edition, this became simply "I loathe your ideals." A few
pages later, Kira said to Andrei, "What are your masses but mud to be
ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?"
Rand's revision deleted this sentence.
Some scholars regard this as a bitter description of communist treatment of the masses, not Rand's own evaluation.
The significance of these and other revisions has been debated.
According to Ronald Merrill, Kira in the first edition "adopts in the
most explicit terms possible the ethical position of Friedrich Nietzsche."
Rand had made her break with Nietzsche by the time she published
The Fountainhead. Barbara Branden says, "Some of her readers were disturbed when they discovered this and similar changes"
but insists that "unlike Nietzsche, she rejected as unforgivably
immoral any suggestion that the superior man had the right to use
physical force as a means to his end.".
Mimi Reisel Gladstein
merely commented, "She claims that the revision was minimal. Some
readers of both editions have questioned her definition of 'minimal'."
Robert Mayhew cautioned that “We should not conclude too quickly that
these passages are strong evidence of an earlier Nietzschean phase in
Ayn Rand’s development, because such language can be strictly
metaphorical (even if the result of an early interest in Nietzsche)”
Despite Rand's own description of the changes, Susan Love Brown
countered that "Mayhew becomes an apologist for Rand’s denials of change
and smooths over the fact that Rand herself saw the error of her ways
and corrected them."
Nearly everyone who reads
We the Living today reads the second edition. The first is a rare book; the second has sold over 3 million copies.
Film Adaptation:
Without Rand's permission,
We the Living, which had been published in an Italian translation in 1937, was made into a two-part film,
Noi Vivi and
Addio, Kira in 1942. The films were directed by Goffredo Alessandrini for Scalera Films of Rome, and starred Alida Valli as Kira, Fosco Giachetti as Andrei, and Rossano Brazzi as Leo. Prior to their release, the films were nearly censored by Mussolini's government, but they were permitted because the story itself was set in Soviet
Russia and was directly critical of that regime. The films were
successful, and the public easily realized that they were as much
against fascism as communism. After several weeks, the films were pulled from theaters after the Nazi German and fascist Italian governments discovered the story also carried an anti-fascist message.
Rediscovered in the 1960s through the efforts of Rand's lawyers, Erika Holzer and Henry Mark Holzer, these films were re-edited into a new version with English
subtitles composed by Erika Holzer and Revision co-Producer Duncan
Scott. This version was approved by Rand and her estate and re-released
as
We the Living in 1986.
A two-disc DVD of the film is currently being sold by Duncan Scott Productions.
Source : Wikipedia
