Posted on 02/14/2019 11:29:00 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
Ayn Rand was born in St. Petersburg on Feb 2, 1905 and received her education in the city.
Yaron Brook from the Ayn Rand Institute says he is happy with the reception the author is now receiving in her hometown...
“We’re in a crisis in the world right now and people everywhere are looking for better ideas.”
By the time her books were translated into Russian in the late 1990s, much of the nation had become disillusioned with the painful transition to capitalism. Rand’s holy grail — the free market — was seen as the primary cause of the decade’s inequality, hyperinflation and financial collapse.
Anastasia Grigorovskaya, a literature professor at the Tyumen State University, says Rand continues to be sidelined in her native country as a result.
“Russia does not remember Ayn Rand. We need to bring her back."
Andrei Shalnev says that the writer’s popularity, especially among the youth, has exploded in the years since the first Ayn Rand birthday conference was held in St. Petersburg in 2014. In fact, the 30-year-old organizer, who wears a trim beard and spectacles, is among the oldest figures in the conference hall.
At the first events, around 50 to 70 people would show up, Shalnev says, and it was mostly an inside affair. This year, he boasts, more than 600 people registered as attendees at the door.
“If there is any future for Russia, then it will only be possible thanks to the ideas of Ayn Rand."
Georgy, a 20-year-old sporting an iconic red “Make America Great Again” baseball cap, describes himself as a right-wing conservative.
"If there was a Russian Trump then I would vote for him, but he doesn't exist," he adds with a shrug.
(Excerpt) Read more at themoscowtimes.com ...
One of the best books I’ve ever read is Atlas Shrugged. I’ll look for more of her books. I did not know anything about her past. Thanks for posting this.
Ayn Rand was moderately popular in Russia in 1990s and absolutely popular from like 15 to 5 years ago.
Not so much today with growing Western-backed interest in socialism.
A person wearing MAGA cap in Russia today is the least appealing promoter of anything right now.
Just my 5 cents.
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Atheist Any Rand is probably seen as an antidote to that Christian morality stuff getting out of hand in Russia
You’re like a guy who just recently hears two other guys discussing The Sopranos. What is that, a TV show?
Or.. planting a tree in your yard, seeing something, and coming to the realization it’s several stacks of hundred dollar bills.
Several years ago a FReeper posted an Atlas Shrugged book club type discussion over several months. It was quite successful. Here it is: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2165176/posts
When I first read Atlas Shrugged the Book of the Month Club listed AS as its second most popular book after The Bible. A friend who I turned onto the book, last year, told me he saw a recent poll where The Bible and AS were the top two books people said greatly influenced their lives.
A quite short book Rand wrote, “Anthem” is always a good less than an hour read. It’s no doubt available to read online, somewhere, either free or very low cost. When we first read it, over 40 years ago, we thought the book illustrated a bizarre and impossible culture. But it’s happenings!
Google it: “Anthem” “Rand” “read online”
“Anthem” is available @ Project Gutenberg
The Fountainhead is her best work, IMHO. I’m trying to get my lefty son to read it. Maybe this article will work.
Do NOT watch the movie! Worst adaptation ever! Pure dreck.
It is one take on it. I disagree with her atheism but it makes sense to make her books required reading for everyone.
Actually I think the best authors exposing the left for what it is are Dostoyevski, Solzhenitsyn and Rand.
The case of Dostoyevski is especially spectacular considering the fact he did it before leftists ever established as a powerful global ideology.
Quite a bit different than the curricula in US high schools.
Any movie by Rand book is of poor production quality. For understandable reason no Hollywood producer would allow a good movie like that produced.
I also recommend Barbara Branden's "The Passion of Ayn Rand" after getting through a few of Rand's books and collections of her non-fiction writings. It is VERY easy to get sucked in to the "cult" of Ayn Rand and Branden's book de-mystifies a very strong woman who, frankly, was a little nutty, very cold, and seemed capable of alienating everyone...she may have been kicked out of Galt's Gulch (or, more precisely, she may have kicked everyone out except Galt).
I believe Rand would likely be a bigger supporter of Trump than Bush - she DID love Charlie's Angels - though she'd consider Trump's cozying up to evangelicals and his nationalism to be irrational.
Brilliant, flawed, interesting Ayn. Long ago I went through a period when I studied her life and work pretty closely.
My favorite anecdotes about her are illustrative, but not flattering. In the first, when she learned her much younger protege and lover Nathaniel Branden (an anagram of Ben Rand, i.e., Son of Rand) was cheating on her, the goddess of reason slapped him hard across the face and flew into a rage with witnesses present, violating her own golden rule that emotions should always be held in check and subordinated to reason.
In the second, at the end of her life when it became clear lung cancer would kill her, her physician urged her to publicly denounce smoking to her legions of fans and followers, many of whom smoked because of her example. She declined. Their health was their problem, she averred. And besides, the champion of nicotine found it much too difficult to admit she was wrong about the habit.
Ayn Rand was correct about private property, capitalism and the meaning of money. She was very wrong about much else.
Ayn Rand was a dismal woman.
‘I disagree with her atheism but it makes sense to make her books required reading for everyone.’
yes, of course; everyone should be made to read stuff like this:
‘An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).
Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?’
“A person wearing MAGA cap in Russia today is the least appealing promoter of anything right now.”
MAGA is for Americans. Has nothing to do with Ayn Rand’s message.
‘Atheist Any Rand’
this woman wholeheartedly believed in butchering babies in the womb, and all people care about is her atheism, which is nothing but a philosophical disposition, impacting nothing...
Try “We The Living”.
I have counted it with atheism thing. Nobody says she is an angel.
Abortion, euthanasia, and eugenics all come naturally to atheists.
Playing little games by saying "all people care about is her atheism" simply shows ignorance with regard to what atheism naturally encompasses just like pretending that Islam is a religion displays ignorance with regard to Islam.
By your logic, I should respond by saying, "abortion is all people care about" to you since you didn't mention euthanasia or the eugenic regulated breeding of humans like cattle along with murdering adults atheists identify as deplorable to create a master race as evils along with mentioning abortion,
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