We the Living (original 1936; edition 1996)

Would it be strange to wish that this book had been written by [a:Irene Nemirovsky|5772020|Irene Nemirovsky|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg]? I'm not saying that Nemirovsky should have written of life under the Soviets or that I wish this book had her more subtle touch. I wouldn't change a word of it, but swapping Nemirovsky's name for [a:Ayn Rand|432|Ayn Rand|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1168729178p2/432.jpg]'s would make this a better book. (Also, lose any introduction or afterword.)

I realize this sounds like a strange notion, but when you pick up a Nemirovsky book, you know that whatever it's flaws, the main goal is to tell a story about flawed human beings coping with the vicissitudes of life. "We the Living" begins in 1922 with the return of the Argounova family to Petrograd after the civil war that followed the Russian Revolution of 1917. The action principally follows Kira, the oldest daughter, who is eighteen at the beginning of the story, but as the novel proceeds it expands to include members of Kira's extended family, as well as her friends. So we get a view of the horrors of Soviet Russia from several views, including that of young party members. One of these, a man named Andrei, who is a member of the secret police and a hero of the revolution, falls madly in love with Kira. However, she herself has already fallen in love with Leo, the son of an aristocrat.

Rand is a powerful witness to the criminality of the Soviets: their corruption, their arbitrary use of power, their lack of principles. The powers-that-be talk about liberating the people, but instead they starve them, brutalize them and force them to volunteer hours to hold on to menial jobs, while corrupt party officials game the system for their own good and flaunt their ill-gotten riches. Though the dialog is sometimes clunky, Rand's writing is very evocative, conveying the destitution of the regime, the way it crushes some and corrupts others. Perhaps most heartbreaking is the plight of men such as Andrei and Stepan Timoshenko, men who fought against the injustice of the Czars only to be betrayed by the new regime.

If Nemirovsky's name were on the title page, this would be a tale of the way that a brutal system damages people, and in Kira, we would see the odd girl whose reaction to the Soviets is flawed and off-kilter because she is just a human being reacting to a terrible situation. In truth Kira, like Gutierrez' Juan Moreira, is a character whose thoughts and actions I did not always agree with, yet whose willingness to stick to her ideals, even if it means death, makes her admirable.

Yet, because this is a Rand novel, Kira is not just a flawed human being, but Rand's stand-in. Her off-kilter philosophy is meant to be the lesson of the book, and this is where the book's major flaw lies. "We the Living" presents us something peculiar, a novel in which the narrator is trustworthy but the author is not. Rand is a great witness of the life under the Soviets, but her interpretation of things (as reflected by Kira) leaves a lot to be desired.

For Kira/Rand's view is not that the Soviets are an elite using power only to serve themselves while millions toil for little, but is that they scorn men like Leo, whose lives are more meaningful than those of ordinary men. This is perplexing, since it's never clear what makes Leo so great, except that he's handsome, haughty and selfish.

If this were a "Brave New World"-style dystopia, where the contentment of the many bought at the cost of the creative or the different, this would be a reasonable objection. However, it's so clear that talk of the proletariat is just window dressing for a self-serving regime, that Kira's inability to see this makes her seem sort of clueless.

Even worse, when Andrei once asks her, "Don't you know that we can't sacrifice millions for the sake of the few?" her response is not that this is precisely what the Soviets are doing are that you cannot bring about justice through injustice, but the following rant:
What are your masses but millions of dull, shriveled, stagnant souls that have no thoughts of their own, no will of their own, who eat and sleep and chew helplessly the words others put into their brains?
So, this should be a brilliant and powerful novel, did it not stop so often to remind me that it was in service to Rand's agenda, her idea of the proper places of the aristocracy and the rabble, the warped views of her stand-in.

Rand meant this book as being not just about Russia or Communism, but about totalitarianism. However, the book falls short compared to Orwell's 1984, which sees to the true dark heart of dictatorship in which power is not a means but an end. ( )

Just be yourself.
Hasn't that been parents' advice to kids since the dawn of time?
Don't try to impress people by putting on a show.
Don't just tell people what you think they want to hear.
Be who you are, and those who appreciate your genuine character will be true friends. I think this is the only book where Ayn Rand is true to herself, without putting on the big überconservative show which makes her later works so irritating.

What's that?
You think maybe Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead represent Ayn's true self?
Well, I can't prove you wrong, but I don't think that's the case. We the Living doesn't smack of ulterior motives the way those other books do. It contains no larger-than-life robberbaron supermen, no fifteen-page speeches, and no fortunes built on miracle inventions. Where Altas Shrugged was really just a platform to espouse Rand's "philosophy" of Objectivism, We the Living is refreshingly 100% Objectivism-free (see my review of Anthem for more details). Better still, it has authentic three-dimensional characters who seem like they might be actual people Ayn knew. This is historical fiction, after all. Many of these events actually happened.



We the Living tells the semi-autobiographical story of college-aged Kira Argounova, whose upper middle class family flees St. Petersburg during the 1917 revolution, and then returns in 1922, trying to make a new life for themselves within the communist system. When they show up at the doorstep of their former townhouse off Nyevsky Prospekt, they discover it has been seized and divided into a multiple-family dwelling. They are advised to apply for a license to live in one of the units if they feel a particular attachment to the old homestead, but as part of the hated former petty bourgeoisie, they should be aware their chances are slim. A similar scene occurs in [book:Doctor Zhivago|9782059] (but in DZ, the family actually obtains residence in their old home). It seems either such occurances were common, or perhaps Pasternak was influenced by We the Living. Food is rationed. Work is obtained only through a state agency, once the applicant has jumped through the many hoops needed to obtain a work license. Since political loyalty is valued more than ability, Kira discovers that many of her least-promising former classmates have risen to positions of authority over her. They hang around the city's most fashionable bars, dressed to the nines in leather finery unavailable to citizens outside the Party. They smoke tobacco the proles could never get their hands on, and enjoy luxuries like fresh fruit, which Kira secretly covets. Reading through these parts, one can practically feel the resentment rising in Ayn's blood as she writes it. Through a paper-thin veneer of fiction, anybody can see this is her story, narrated very personally, with a ring of truth her other novels lack.

Consider how Ayn's life closely mirrors Argounova's: Ayn's father had owned a profitable pharmacy in St Petersburg before the revolution, just as Kira's father owned a successful textiles factory. Both Ayn and Kira's families fled St. Petersburg to the Crimea in 1917, fearing for their daughters' safety. As I said, this novel contains events which actually happened to real people.



Ayn and Kira both returned to St.Petersburg (now Petrograd) in 1922, to find the social and political changes described in this book. They each managed to enroll at Petrograd University, after considerable bureaucratic resistance, and both found their career prospects after graduation to be severely limited, due to the continued stigma of their fathers' pre-Revolutionary social status. While both tried to leave the Soviet Union, only Ayn made it to America. Kira died at the border, which demands some explanation. Why did Ayn make the choice as an author to deny Kira a life in the West? Ayn always had a weakness for melodrama; did she kill Kira for the pure intense tragedy of it? Did she think it would put greater empahsis on the injustices of the Soviet system? Why else end the novel with a sympathetic character both bleeding and freezing to death, alone in the dark, in the middle of nowhere? It seems a bit too cruel, even for a novel whose entire point is outrage and cruelty.

If you enjoy deriding Ayn Rand's wooden characters or her preachy, didactic writing style, this book won't be much fun for you. But if you're a more thoughtful type, who is curious about where her ideas came from, this is the book that tells it all. Sure, We the Living has hints of the moral certitude that makes Atlas Shrugged so shrill and irksome, but the story is heartfelt and the characters believable. Unfortunately, this best of Rand's novels also happens to be her first, so maybe she should have quit while she was ahead. ( )

".......My heart is a tractor raking the soil,
My soul is smoke from the factory oil..." = page 163

I just 're-found" this old paperback in my old backpack stashed under my parents house. I never finished it. I originally found it in the back seat pocket hold-it-all on a Garuda flight from Indonesia...wondering if we'd ever make it through the electrical storm- the plane kept suddenly dropping and the lights flickering & I was frantically searching for the map/plan of the planes exit doors (there wasn't a map ;( so I started reading We the Living to calm my nerves. Back then Garuda pilots weren't well trained. Anyhow the actual paperback has traveled far. Inside front and back pages has listed various pilots who had picked up the book and read it between flights..and where they flew to - flight hours etc..also interesting reading. (Ballarat to Bermuda to Nassau to Mexico city to Acapulco to HNL to Nani to Sydney to Heathrow to Bangkok to Delhi to Tehran to London, to Sydney, to Longreach, to Djkarta....

I think I finally fell asleep after too many Arrack toddies...(Batavia Arrack is distilled in Indonesia. It is the "rum" of Indonesia & made from sugar cane & I used to like it in coffee though the arrack bought in roadside cafes was more moonshine than the real thing & infinitely stronger somehow). Before falling asleep I remembered thinking there were some political similarities between Russia and Indonesia at the time - well the police corruption to start with anyway and Arrack seemed to be the Indonesian peasant's vodka.. (1970's).

Ayn Rand has never been known for a great writing style, just for revolutionary ideas.

This book is rather boring. At the time that I read it, I remember liking just one single page. It's not a page that I agree with wholeheartedly; it's just a conversation I find (even fifteen years later) worthy of contemplation.


"Do you believe in God, Andrei?"
"No."
"Neither do I. But that's a favorite question of mine. An upside-down question, you know."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, if I asked people whether they believed in life, they'd never understand what I meant. It's a bad question. It can mean so much that it really means nothing. So I ask them if they believe in God. And if they say they do -- then, I know they don't believe in life."
"Why?"
"Because, you see, God -- whatever anyone chooses to call God -- is one's highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it." ( )

this was an excellent book. i really like rand and her books. i thought that i'd read this one but didn't remember so read it again/ course it turned out i hadn't read it yet. this book really gives you the feel of russian oppression. it takes you to the inside of both sides and gives you an interesting view. and of course she'd know. that's another reason i like this author she was there. also her philosophy and perspective is one that will make you think. ( )