Ayn Rand and the World She Made - Anne C. Heller [259]
broad squares of St. Petersburg: Bruce W. Lincoln, Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War 19181921 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), p. 34.
Temperatures stood at twenty or thirty degrees below zero: A Peopie’s Tragedy, p. 307
Six million Russians: Red Victory, pp. 38–39.
shortages of food: Red Victory, p. 32.
railway system had long since broken down: A Peoples Tragedy, pp. 282–83.
Crime was rampant: St. Petersburg, p. 197.
Czarist “Black Hundreds”: A Peoples Tragedy, p. 277.
retreated from the advancing Germans: A History of the Jews, pp. 423–24; Salo W. Baron, The Russian Jew under the Tsars and Soviets (New York: Macmillan, 1964), pp. 188–95. Under pressure from Russia’s war allies and bankers, the czar’s ministers had abolished the Pale of Settlement in August 1915 (Bruce W. Lincoln, Passage Through Armageddon:The Russians in War and Revolution [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986], p. 143), but I refer to it here for the sake of convenience.
welcomed temporary German occupation: A History of the Jews, pp. 423–24; Russian Jew, pp. 188–95.
as were most Russian Jews: A History of the Jews, p. 452.
Short for her age: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”
She assigned herself a new task: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”
The job of the adolescent: Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto (New York: Signet, 1971), p. 28.
her first close friend: Olga was born on January 5, 1903. She is listed as a member of AR’s 1915–16 Stoiunin class (fond 148, inventory 1, file 420, pp. 1–2 in the Central Historic Archive of St. Petersburg). She also attended the school during the 1916–17 academic year, according to research by Chris Sciabarra (“The Ayn Rand Transcript,” p. 6).
a cultured heiress: Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years, quoting I. V. Hessen, p. 33. I am indebted to Boyd’s book and to Vera, by Stacy Schiff, for much of the information about Olga’s family.
advocacy of political rights for Jews: The adult AR promoted a view of herself in which she was indifferent to her Jewish background. This is unlikely, as I try to show later. Yet it’s doubtful whether she could have befriended a Russian Orthodox girl whose family wasn’t pro-Semitic; Russian anti-Semitism was too pervasive and too deep. Olga’s father, like her grandfather, was an active champion of Russia’s Jews; according to biographer Boyd (Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years, p. 27), V. D. Nabokov was “the most outspoken defender of Jewish rights among all Russian gentiles trained in the law.” Olga’s famous brother Vladimir married a Jewish St. Petersburg girl three years older than AR, whom he met in exile in Berlin (Vera, pp. 9–11, 13–14).
Olga’s father, V. D. Nabokov: Lionel Kochan, ed., The Jews in Soviet Russia since 1917 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 17.
a member of Rand’s class since 1915: Central Historic Archive of St. Petersburg, fond 148.
looked after by footmen: Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years, pp. 48–90.
paid many visits to the family home in 1917: The quoted material is based on Dr. Sciabarra’s personal correspondence with Helene Sikorski in 1996, in which Mme. Sikorski recalled her sister’s “dear” friendship with AR in 1917 (“The Ayn Rand Transcript,” p. 6).
“vast”: WTL, p. 45.
“stately granite mansion”: WTL, p. 21.
“a maid in black”: WTL, p. 45. In AR’s handwritten first draft of WTL, when Kira Argounova pretends to ask a militiaman for directions home, she asks for Morskaia [sic] Street, where the Nabokovs lived; noticing her slip, perhaps, AR crossed out “Morskaia” and wrote in “Mioka,” the street on which the fictional Argounovas have an apartment (Ayn Rand Papers, LOC, Washington, D.C., box 26, folder 4, p. 152/22). In her first draft, she also wrote that the Argounovas left St. Petersburg for the Crimea in the fall of 1917, as Rand believed the Nabokovs did. The Rosenbaums left in 1918 (Ayn Rand Papers, LOC, box 26, folder 1, p. 7).
frustration with her daughter’s gracelessness: “Ayn Rand’s Life.”
She and Olga “conversed endlessly”: “The AR Transcript,” p. 6, citing Helene Sikorski’s correspondence.
Rand wanted a republic: