We the Living

464 Pages·1996·5.64 MB·English

by  Ayn Rand

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WE THE LIVING

published in 1936, was Ayn Rand's first novel,

and it has gone on to sell nearly two million

copies in the mass market edition. Featuring a

new Introduction by Leonard Peikoff, this new

edition marks the 60th A nniversary of the nov­

el's original publication.

The theme of We the Living is one of the most

significant of our time-the struggle of the indi­

vidual against the state. It portrays the impact of

the Russian Revolution on three human beings

who assert the right to live their own lives and

pursue their own happiness. It tells of a wom­

an's passionate love, held like a fortress against

the corrupting evil of a totalitarian state, which

demands from its citizens not independence but

self-sacrifice.
WE
THE
LIVING

Ayn Rand

With a New Introduction by

Leonard Peikoff

(])

A SIGNET BOOK
SIGNET
Published by New American Library, a division of
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80 Strand, London WCZR ORL, England

Pubiishcd by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin
Group (USA) Inc. This is an authorized reprint of a hardcover edition published by
Random House Inc.

First Signet Printing (60th Anniversary Edition), January 1996
30 29 28 27 26 25

Copyright © Ayn Rand O'Connor, 1936, 1959
Copyright © renewed Ayn Rand O'Connor, 1964
Copyright © renewed Eugene Winick, Paul Gitlin, Leonard Peikoff, 1987
Introduction copyright © Leonard Peikoff, 1995
All rights reserved

Information about other books by Ayn Rand and her philosophy, Objectivism, may
be obtained by writing to OBJECTIVISM, PO Box 51808, Irvine, California, 92619.

(1) RE<.ISTERED TRADEMARK�MARCA REGISTRADA

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Introduction to the
60th Anniversary Edition
by Leonard Peikoff

As a youngster, Ayn Rand continually imagined ideas for
plays and novels to write when she grew up. Not a single one
of her stories pertained to Russia, which she hated. It was
something of a paradox to her, therefore, that she set her first
novel in Soviet Russia.
Part of the explanation is that, having finally escaped to
the United States , she had to get Russia out of her
system-by telling the world what was actually happening
there. Her husband, Frank O ' Connor, and his brother Nick
urged her to write the novel. Both were horrified by her experiences in Russia, and they convinced her that Americans
had no idea of the truth. A young Russian had said to her at
a party in 1926, just before she left for America: "When you

get there, tell them that Russia is a huge cemetery and that
we are all dying." We the Living told them.
Her novel, Ayn Rand wrote on its completion, is "the first
story written by a Russian who knows the living conditions

of the new Russia and who has actually lived under the Soviets in the period described ... the first one by a person

who knows the facts and also [having escaped] can tell
them."!
Another part of the explanation for a Russian novel is that,

being an immigrant and a beginner, Ayn Rand did not feel

ready yet for anything else. She did have in mind the idea for
a novel set in an airship orbiting the earth, and she debated
between the two projects. But the Russian novel had a great
advantage: no research was necessary for We the Living ; she
already knew the background-whereas she did not know the

conditions, the people, or the language well enough to do a
story set in America (or in an airship).
Further, since Ayn Rand was only twenty-five in 1930,
when she started the book, "I thought I was too young to
write about adults."2 She was not yet ready to present her
kind of hero or broad, philosophical theme-she had not defined her ideas fully enough or acquired the necessary liter-
vi

I N TR O D UC T I O N

ary skill-and the story of We the Living did not require
these developments.
Although her theme here is political rather than philosophical, this is very much an Ayn Rand novel: as a thinking

mind, she could not write about concretes apart from their
meaning and implications. The theme of the novel, accord­

ingly, is universal. " We the Living, " she writes in her 1958
Foreword, "is not a novel 'about Soviet Russia.' It is a novel
about Man against the State .. .. It is a story about Dictator­

ship, any dictatorship, anywhere, at any time, whether it be
Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, or-which this novel might do
its share in helping to prevent-a socialist America."3
The novel's original title was Airti'ght, the meaning being
that under dictatorship man cannot survive. Dictatorship, she

writes in her j ournal, "crush [es] [a] whole country and
smother[s] every bit of life, action, and air.... [It] makes the
atmosphere choking, airtight...."
The plot of the novel occurred to her initially as a twist on
a standard plot, the story of the virtuous girl who sells herself
to a villain in order to save the hero, whom she loves. Ayn
Rand thought: Wouldn't it be interesting if "the man to
whom [the girl] sells herself is not a villain but a hero-and
the man for whom she makes her sacrifice is the villain in
the end" ? With this twist, the heroine's conflict deepens immeasurably, while the final tragedy becomes in a sense even
greater for the "villain" than for the other two.4
When she started to project the story, the first scene in Ayn
Rand's mind was the arrest scene, when Andrei, the GPU
agent who loves Kira, comes to take Leo away to j ail-and
discovers that Kira is Leo's mistress. The drama of this kind
of scene was Ayn Rand's personal motivation to do the
novel. She then constructed the story backward, by deciding
what events had to be presented to lead to this climax.
Several of the characters were suggested by people whom
Ayn Rand had known in Russia. Kira, of course, though not
intended as a self-portrait, is Ayn Rand intellectually and

morally; she has all of Ayn Rand's ideas and values. Irina is
based on her youngest sister, Nora, who drew the very same
kind of caricatures. Uncle Vasili was taken, in essence and
appearance, from her own father. As to the two men, Andrei
is a pure invention, but Leo is real; he is a romanticized version of the first man Ayn Rand ever loved, a student she had
met in college at the age of seventeen and gone out with
I N TR O D UC T I O N

vii

many times. His name was Leo. She disliked the name, but
felt that she had no choice about using it: in her mind, the
character was inseparable from the man.
I have often heard people argue about who is superior:
Andrei or Leo (Kira is superior to both). Despite the book's
hero-villain plot twist, there is no doubt as to Ayn Rand' s answer, which I heard her state on several occasions. Her favorite was Leo, not only for the personal reason mentioned but
also for a philosophical reason: the fact that Leo, by conscious premises, is an egoist, an individualist, a man of arrogant self-esteem who lives for his values. Andrei, by
contrast, is a man explicitly committed to the opposite ideas ;
he accepts the principles of selflessness and collectivism as
his moral ideal, and then acts on them, down to spilling all
the blood they require. Given the plot twist, Ayn Rand
worked hard to make Andrei as noble as possible; but his nobility exists basically on the subconscious level. It lies in his
soul, his unidentified individualistic premises, which are at
war with his actions and conscious viewpoint. Ayn Rand
j udged people, essentially, by these last.
When Andrei discovers his error, he commits suicide; he is
totally honest. But the point is: what he discovers is that he
gave his life to a lie. Leo knew better from the start (even if
he breaks in the end).
If Leo had been born in America, he would have become
Francisco D' Anconia of Atlas Shrugged; that is, the measure

of his heroic potential. In Russia, however, he is crushed. To
the extent that an individual is rational, independent, uncompromising, passionate-to the extent that he tries to act according to his own mind and value judgments-his life under
the rule of physical force becomes unendurable. The only answer he sees to his questions and ambitions is the muzzle of
a gun. In principle, such a man has three choices.
One is to commit suicide.This is the choice Andrei makes,
when he grasps the depravity of his "ideal."
Another is to attempt to make the clash between mind and
force endurable by nullifying one of the two clashing elements, the only one in the victim's power: his own mind.
This means: drowning his mind, and thereby losing the ability to know or care any longer what is being done to him.
This is Leo's choice; it is living death, or drawn-out suicide,
as against immediate self-destruction. In her j ournal, Ayn
Rand does not regard Leo's choice as evil. Rather, she de-
viii

I N TR O D UCTI O N

scribes him as a man who is "too strong to compromise, but
too weak to withstand the pressure, who cannot bend, but
only break. "
The third choice is that of Kira-to flee abroad. In real life
the attempt to flee might well be successful, as it was in Ayn
Rand's own case. In the context of the novel, however, Kira
had to die in the attempt. If the book's theme is tl].e fate of
the living under the rule of killers, there is no place for the
accident of escape. The essence of such a political system is
destruction, whether the individual is within the borders or
trying to run across them.
In her journal" Ayn Rand summarized, in characterological
terms, the three forms of destruction depicted in the novel:
"The higher and stronger [individual] is broken, but not conquered; she falls on the battlefield, still the same individual,
untouched: Kira. The one with less resistance is broken and
conquered; he disintegrates under an unbearable strain: Leo.
And the best of those who believed in the ideal is broken by
the realization of what that ideal really means: Andrei. "
Ayn Rand finished We the Living in 1933. The principal
reaction of the manuscript's early readers, she wrote in a
1934 letter, "is one of complete amazement at the revelation
,,
of Soviet life as it is actually lived. 5 Almost sixty years
later, I cannot resist adding, the grandchildren of such readers were still being amazed by Soviet life, this time as they
watched it lead to the collapse of the entire Soviet structure.
Ayn Rand knew that the American public did not understand the nature of communism, but she did not know that
she was trying to publish the truth at the start of the Red
Decade, as it was later called. An anti-communist librarian
had told her, when she was still working on the novel, that
"the communists have a tremendous influence " on American
intellectuals, "and you will find a lot of people opposing
you. " "I was indignant, " Ayn Rand recalled years later. "I
didn't believe her. I thought that she is a typical Russian and
is, in effect, panic mongering. "6
For nearly three years, We the Living was rejected by New
York publishers . It was rej ected by more than a dozen
houses. A typical rejection said that the author did not understand socialism. Gradually, Ayn Rand came to see how accurate the librarian had been. By 1936, she herself was writing
to a friend that "New York is full of people sold bodies and
souls to the Soviets. "7
I N TR O D UC T I O N

be

At last the book came to Macmillan, whose editorial board
was divided about it. One of the associate editors, who
fought against the book "violently " (Ayn Rand's word), was
Granville Hicks. Several years later, Hicks admitted publicly
that he had been a member of the Communist Party. After a
bitter struggle Hicks was overruled by the owner of the company, an elderly gentleman who said that he did not know
whether the book would make any money, but that it was important and ought to be published. (It is instructive to note
that in 1957, the New York Times chose the same man, Granville Hicks, to review Atlas Shrugged for the Sunday Book
Review.)
We the Living did poorly at first. A year after publication,

however, in 1937, thanks to word of mouth, the novel started
to take off. But it was too late: Macmillan had set the book
from type, not plates, and had destroyed the type in the first
months. As a result, while the book was achieving great success in England, Denmark, and Italy, it went out of print in
America, and had to wait a quarter of a century to reach its
audience. In 1958, after the triumph of Atlas Shrugged, a

new American edition was finally brought out by Random

House; a year later, a mass-market paperback was published
by New American Library.
By now We the Living has sold over two million copies in

the United States. To bring the book to a wider audience,
Ayn Rand in 1939 turned it into a play, which opened on
Broadway under the title of The Unconquered. She did not
think the book was "proper stage material, " she said later,
but she tried her best to adapt it-under impossible circum­

stances, with a producer (George Abbott) who fought her every step of the way, and a country full of acting talents afraid
to come near anything so controversial. One famous actress,
Bette Davis, read the script and declared that she loved it and
would be honored to play the part of Kira. Her agent forbade
her to do it, on the grounds that such an anti-communist role
would destroy her career. This is a small indication of the
country ' s intellectual state at the time-and of what Ayn
Rand was up against. The play closed after five performances.
During World War II, We the Living was pirated by an

Italian film company, which produced a movie version and
released it without the knowledge or consent of Ayn Rand.
The movie starred Alida Valli as Kira and Rossano Brazzi