Paul Goble
Staunton,
December 12 – Ayn Rand (1905-1982) whose writings celebrate capitalism and
unbridled selfishness was born Alisa Rozenbaum in tsarist Russia and lived in
the Soviet Union until 1926 when as a result of a concatenation of
circumstances, she succeeded in leaving the workers’ paradise and coming to the
US, the land of her dreams.
In
an essay for the Russian Seven portal, historian Mikhail Kizilov tells how
something many might have thought impossible in fact occurred – and not by any
stealth measure but rather using then-quite ordinary Soviet and American
channels (russian7.ru/post/ayn-ryend-kak-znamenitoy-pisatelnice/).
The first factor working in her
favor, the historian says, is that she had relatives in the US who had
sufficient funds to guarantee her trip and expenses during it. They issued an
invitation which was accepted by Soviet officialdom because they operated a
theater and she was studying acting at the time and thus could portray the trip
as a quasi-official one.
But that only got her over one of
the barriers. She had to get a Soviet passport good for foreign travel, easier
to get in 1926 than later but still not automatic. Finally, it came through and she took the
train to Riga. There Ayn Rand
encountered two more barriers: Latvian suspiciousness about Soviet emigres and the
need to get an American visa.
The US consular official there did
not want to give it to her because on one of the documents he had it specified
that she was “engaged to an American.” That would have been enough to turn her
down because it would indicate that she planned to stay in the US rather than
return to the USSR as her declaration specified.
Rand noticed the statement, said it
was not true, and the consular official came through with a visa. She then
travelled on to Berlin and Paris before taking a ship from Le Havre to New York
where she arrived on February 19, 1926. It had taken her more than five weeks
after leaving Leningrad.
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