This article examines the new type of hero created by Ayn Rand and finds its roots in Chernyshevsky's “new human.” Rand's characters share such features as extremism, asceticism, escapism, and the desire to transform the world. Moreover, Rand's heroes exhibit the self-building and “wholeness” traits of the “superhuman” as found in myths and in Renaissance and Masonic ideas.

This article interprets Ayn Rand's last novel, Atlas Shrugged, through the lens of Trauma Studies. The author argues that the novel reflects Rand's traumatic experiences of the February and October revolutions in Russia and can be viewed as the means by which the author engaged in the process of what Dominick LaCapra has called “working-through.”.

This essay offers a detailed analysis of archival documents from the Stoyunin Gymnasium Foundation. The young Ayn Rand (born Alissa Rosenbaum) was a pupil of this gymnasium (1914–18). A range of documents published for the first time include lists of the first and second grades (1914–15 and 1915–16), a fragment of the class register (1915–16), member lists of the Stoyunin gymnasium pedagogical council and of class trips (1915–16), and a table of school hours allocation. This essay also discloses the names (...) of Alissaʼs teachers and the Russian philology lessons taught at the gymnasium. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to identify the influence on Ayn Rand's work of Friedrich Nietzsche in Silver Age Russia. The analysis focuses on Rand's novels We the Living, The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, and some of her nonfiction philosophical essays. Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None is the work by Nietzsche that is central to the analysis.

The events of the Russian Revolution, which took place one hundred years ago in October 1917, are reflected in Ayn Rand's first novel We the Living. This article shows Rand's relationship to the Russian Diaspora—though her name is not usually associated with Russian émigré authors. This article compares Rand's work with the novels of another Russian émigré writer—Mark Aldanov (Escape, Suicide)—which shows a common comprehension of the October Revolution in the works of both writers, with similar art images, interpretations of (...) the reasons for the revolution, and an understanding of its harmful consequences for Russia. (shrink)

This article reviews the first book in Russian to reflect on Rand’s life and work in the context of her native land. It publishes some key documents from Rand’s Russian past for the first time and presents one of the most important independent and objective analyses of Rand’s legacy.