Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (17 page)

As if sensing a natural spiritual affinity between Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche, Alissa moved on to the works of the famous German philosopher. She had first discovered Nietzsche’s
Thus Spake Zarathustra
upon the advice of an older cousin. She was captivated by its exaltation of the heroic, its defense of the individual, and its dismissal of altruism as slave morality.
³⁸
But as she read further, Alissa was troubled by Nietzsche’s defense of psychological determinism. In her reading of
The Birth of Tragedy
, Alissa discovered that Nietzsche had embraced Dionysian, drunken, orgiastic emotionalism over
Apollo
nian reason (B. Branden 1986, 45).

Certainly, this interpretation of Nietzsche was widespread throughout the
Silver Age
of Russian philosophy. The
Symbolists
, among others, celebrated Nietzsche precisely because he exalted a Dionysian cultic loss of self. Alissa would have been exposed to this particular Nietzschean theme in the work of
Aleksandr Blok
, one of her favorite poets. But she could have also incorporated such interpretations of Nietzsche from the lectures of
Faddei Frantsevich Zielinsky
, another social science teacher at Petrograd University and one of the greatest classical scholars of the twentieth century.

Zielinsky taught at the university from 1885 through 1921. Alissa may not have entered the university in time to register in one of his courses, but he had had a huge impact on many other Russian scholars and poets of his generation. Editor of the journal
Vestnik vsemirnoi istorii
(Herald of universal history), Zielinsky was a specialist on ancient Greece. He translated the works of Herodotus and Thucydides into Russian and wrote on Greek and Roman mythology.

Zielinsky viewed Nietzsche’s philosophy as “the last major contribution of antiquity to contemporary thought.”
³⁹
He believed that the resurgence of the Dionysian impulse was a necessary requirement to curb the “highly moralistic influence of Judaism in
Christianity
.”
⁴⁰
His celebration of the Dionysian was consistent with the views of other Silver Age thinkers who were integrating the works of Nietzsche with a mystical Christian worldview.

Alissa was probably among the last students at the university to study Nietzsche’s philosophy formally. Lenin’s wife,
Nadezhda Krupskaya
, began a campaign to remove ideologically dangerous books from the People’s Libraries. Nietzsche’s works were foremost among the banned materials. They were removed from libraries in factories, trade union halls, and universities, and were placed on closed reserve in major research centers along with other “counterrevolutionary” tracts (Rosenthal and
Bohachevsky-Chomiak 1990, xiii). In 1923–24, some of Nietzsche’s books were burned by the authorities.
⁴¹
Apparently, where the Symbolists had recognized a cultic collectivism in Nietzsche’s work, the Soviet regime could see only a preoccupation with the heroic, creative, and the solitary.
⁴²

Alissa’s exposure to formal philosophy was probably limited to a few university courses. But included in nearly every history course she took, there was a significant dose of “intellectual” history. As a philosophy minor, she would have been required to take several courses offered by philosophy department faculty.
⁴³

Petrograd’s philosophy department was dominated by neo-Kantians, including
Ivan Ivanovich Lapshin
, Sergei
Alexeev
ich Alexeev (who wrote under the name Askoldov), and Aleksandr Ivanovich Vvedensky (B.
Lossky
1991, 74–77, 89, 158 n. 116). Lapshin rejected metaphysical speculation, whereas Alexeev criticized the doctrine of dialectical materialism. These two thinkers were greatly influenced by their mentor, Aleksandr Vvedensky. An elderly master who survived the deportations and the purges, Vveden-sky taught from 1890 to 1925. He was a genuine Kantian, offering courses in logic, psychology, and the history of philosophy. As an exceptionally gifted teacher, Vvedensky touched the lives of many thousands of students who attended his lectures and were inspired by his ideas (Lossky 1951, 164). Among his students was N. O. Lossky. Vvedensky advocated a deontological morality, faith in God, the immortality of the soul, and the necessity of free will.

Yet it does not seem that Alissa had any extensive exposure to the teachings of Kantian philosophers at Petrograd University.
Rand
never mentioned Kantian philosophy as a subject she studied extensively in college, though she probably had light exposure to Kant’s ideas.
⁴⁴
Despite the presence of all of these world-renowned historians, philosophers, and scholars, Rand never publicly acknowledged the names of any of her teachers—except one. This is not atypical of Rand; in fact, in keeping with her own visions of self-creation, she concedes only a limited literary and philosophical debt to
Hugo
,
Dostoyevsky
, and Aristotle.
⁴⁵
The one teacher whose name she mentioned in any context, was Nicholas Onufrievich Lossky.

LOSSKY AND RAND

Any investigation of the links between
Lossky
and Rand is fraught with problems. It is almost impossible to establish with certainty the exact circumstances of their relationship. None of Rand’s early journal writings survived her Russian years. Rand burned her philosophic diaries and fictional
outlines long before she came to the United States. She knew that if discovered, such writings would implicate her as an anticommunist (B. Branden 1986, 38). Very little of Rand’s American
journals
have been made public, and none of the published entries date prior to 1934. In any event, it is unlikely that the unpublished diaries of Rand would include extensive comments, if any, on Lossky.

The first mention of Lossky occurs in a single paragraph of Barbara Branden’s biographical essay, “Who is Ayn Rand?” This personal recollection is drawn from over forty hours of interviews that Branden conducted with Rand.
⁴⁶
Lossky is the only one of her professors whom Rand mentioned in these interviews. Branden nearly duplicates this Lossky reference from her early essay, in her best-selling, book-length biography,
The Passion of Ayn Rand.
Because of its historical importance, I quote this passage at length:

Despite her doubts about the value of formal philosophy, she chose as an elective a course on the history of ancient philosophy. The course was taught by Professor N. O. Losky [
sic
], a distinguished international authority on
Plato
. To her surprise, the course turned out to be her favorite. She was profoundly impressed by
Aristotle
’s definition of the laws of logic, and rejected completely, “the mysticism, and collectivism” of Plato.… Professor Losky [
sic
] was a stern, exacting man, contemptuous of all students, particularly of women. It was said that he failed most students the first time they took his examination, and that he was especially hard on women. In the spring, his students went to his home for their oral examination; a long line of them stood outside his study, nervously awaiting their turn. Alice had hoped that she would be questioned on Aristotle. But when she entered his study, he questioned her only about Plato. She had studied carefully, and she answered easily and precisely. After a while, although she had not stated any estimate, Professor Losky [
sic
] said sardonically: “You don’t agree with Plato, do you?” “No, I don’t,” she answered. “Tell me why,” he demanded. She replied, “My philosophical views are not part of the history of philosophy yet. But they will be.” “Give me your examination book,” he ordered. He wrote in the book and handed it back to her. “Next student,” he said. He had written: Perfect.
⁴⁷

There are only three subtle differences between this passage and the one that appears in “Who is Ayn Rand?” In the earlier biographical essay, Branden tells us that
Lossky
gave Alissa a “Perfect” grade, out of three possibilities: Perfect, Passing, or Failure. She adds that Lossky believed that female students “had no business in philosophy.” She also spells Lossky’s
name correctly.
⁴⁸
None of these distinctions alters the essential intellectual chutzpa that Rand exhibited in her final examination session with the famed professor.

The authenticity of Rand’s reminiscences has been challenged in some respects by at least four scholars, three of whom are relatives of Lossky. Boris and
Andrew, Lossky’s
surviving sons, and Nicholas, his grandson, have all objected to the characterization of N. O. Lossky as contemptuous of female philosophy students. They point out that their family has had a history of strong women, including
Maria Stoiunina
, who established the famous gymnasium for girls and young ladies, attended by Alissa Rosenbaum, and in which Lossky actually taught. One of Lossky’s female students during the Russian period of his life,
Natalie Duddington
, became a lifelong friend and the English translator of his important works. Andrew recollects that his father demanded a basic competence in the subject matter of his courses from both men and women, making no distinctions between them. His examinations were forthright, neither tricky nor especially difficult. The distinguished philosopher George Kline was a regular auditor of two of Lossky’s courses at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. He too vouches for the professor’s fairness and nonsexist attitudes. Kline enjoyed a friendly correspondence with Lossky and recalls that the professor “always treated his students with respect and kindness.” Lossky’s contempt was reserved only for dogmatic, simplistic, Marxist-Leninists who attacked speculative and idealist thought.
⁴⁹

As an expert in the history of Russian philosophy, Kline has also taken issue with the characterization of Lossky as a scholar of
Plato
. Lossky knew his Greek philosophy well and would have been more than qualified to teach a course on the ancients. But as a specialist in German philosophy from Kant to
Husserl
, N. O. Lossky published nearly three hundred works, and not one of them even mentions Plato in the title.

Some of the interpretive differences regarding Lossky’s attitudes toward female philosophy students can be attributed to subjective factors. The evidence indicates that Lossky was not unfair to his women students. However, it is impossible to grasp the mental strain under which Lossky lived in the 1921–22 academic year. This may very well have affected his demeanor and otherwise affable personality. Certainly it cannot be discounted that to a sixteen-year-old student, any professor in a bad mood could be the source of great personal consternation. It is also quite possible that as a fiction writer, Rand has merely embellished the story by intensifying the conflict between its major characters.
⁵⁰

But there is a greater problem of historical authenticity that requires some elucidation.

In 1920–21, Lossky was at the top of his profession. He had already published a number of significant philosophical treatises, and continued to lecture at the university, and at the
Stoiunin Gymnasium
. He succeeded in earning a few extra black bread rations by teaching an “Introduction to Philosophy” course in the National University, a school of adult
education
, in the Shlissel’burg district of Petrograd.
⁵¹
He gave lectures on the subject of God in the system of organic philosophy to the Free Philosophical Association.

Lossky’s courses at the university were in the grand
intuitivist
tradition of philosophy he spearheaded. In 1916, he taught on Fichte,
Schelling
, and Hegel and on Leibniz. In 1917, he offered classes on the theory of judgments, and an introduction to philosophy. In 1918–19, he lectured on the problems of free will, the problem of the trans-subjectivity of sensory qualities, logic, contemporary epistemology, and an introduction to metaphysics. In 1919–20, Lossky again offered his course on Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, followed in 1920–21 by a seminar on materialism, hylozoism, and vitalism from an antimaterialist perspective.
⁵²
None of his listed university courses dealt specifically with Plato, Aristotle, or the ancient philosophers.

More important, something happened in the summer of 1921 that would alter Lossky’s life forever, ending his illustrious career at the university and ultimately leading to his
exile
from the Soviet Union. In Moscow, a meeting of the State Scientific Council was called to discuss the future of university professors. The regime was becoming increasingly suspicious of those non-Marxist professors and intellectuals who had continued to oppose the
Revolution
.
M. N. Pokrovsky
chaired the meeting. The Council removed many of Petrograd’s privatdocents. Professor
Lapshin
was also barred from teaching. Only
Aleksandr Vvedensky
was allowed to remain.

When the Council addressed the issue of the celebrated Lossky’s presence at the university, they were compelled to censure him for his defense of the Trinity. But it was brought to the attention of Pokrovsky that Lossky, to his credit, had once been expelled from the Vitebsk Gymnasium for his propagandistic views in favor of atheism and socialism. The Council decided to remove him from his Petrograd teaching position, but allow him to serve in the Institute of Scientific Research, an annex to the university. Consequently, in 1921, Lossky—officially—taught no university courses.

Pitirim Sorokin
, another of the ousted professors, knew that the autonomy of the university was being destroyed. Elected deans were replaced by Communists, and a Red student was given a special commissary position over the rector of the university. He observes that the research the barred professors conducted at the Historical and Sociological Institutes, kept them away from teaching responsibilities “where they would not be harmful to students” ([1924] 1950, 247, 284). With many Petrograd positions
vacated, students were subjected to the amateur scholarship of newly appointed Bolshevik professors. One such professor,
Borichevsky
, taught a course in logic which competed with Vvedensky’s. Borichevsky’s expertise was limited to Spinoza,
Epicurus
, and materialism. His embarrassing mistakes in the presentation of Plato’s philosophy were the subject of the students’ ridicule. Sorokin adds that those professors who were barred from teaching were also barred from organizing special alternative courses.