BOOK PROPOSAL FOR CRITICAL ESSAYS ON AYN RAND’S WE THE LIVING

Essay 1: How Communism Destroys People’s Lives in Ayn   Rand’s We the Living (50, 003 words) 

Summary: 

My opening essay analyzes how the book’s Soviet  regime ruins the lives of We the Living’s characters in 50  ways. But, to save space, I will narrate just 5 of them.  

One, Communists break characters’ lives by  nationalizing their homes, stores, businesses, and bank  accounts, then centralizing all large social supplies and  provisions. Like food, housing, medical care, and higher  education, which are all concentrated and distributed by state  agencies. 

Second, Marxists waste characters time – and damage  their health – by making Russians queue-up in endless lines for barely edible food—mildewed millet, moldy flour, rancid  sunflower seed oil, powdered eggs, rotten cabbage, dried  herring, acorn coffee, coffee-ground pancakes, and crusty  bread—in front of state agencies, communal kitchens, state  co-operatives, and other provision centers. Where characters  are forced to trade their ration cards for incredibly low 

quality food that is always in short supply. As they wait in long lines, even on Saturdays, for the thin trickle of life that  still drips from provision centers.  

Third, the regime destroys people’s working lives by  forcing characters to partake in State sponsored social  activities for no pay, otherwise they are fired for disloyalty.  

Besides subjecting characters to the dreaded reduction of-staffs system, the fourth way the novel’s government  destroys Russia’s social fabric is by replacing the bonds of family love with the ties of State loyalty. By forcing Russian  parents to turn over their children to Soviet youth groups,  like the Young Pioneers, for example, or the Teenage  Komsomol, for instance. Thereby, brainwashing the next  generation of robotic young revolutionaries. By not only  forcing them to conduct physical cultural drills—singing,  marching and playing drums—but also by distributing and  discussing Soviet propaganda with them too.  

The fifth way the book’s Soviet regime wrecks  characters lives is by violating their privacy rights, even in  their own homes, which they do by constantly moving  strangers into people’s private flats. Designating that an  Upravdom (a Soviet building manager) not only dictate to  Soviet citizens how much square footage they are allowed to  live in but a state official who continually enforcesthe State’s  Domicile Norm, which stipulates that any apartment above  the proscribed square footage will immediately have more  people moved into it. Because its square footage is greater than the maximum allowed by law. Further, if characters find  housing, the flats people move into often have no heat, no  electricity, no water, no air conditioning, no telephones,  burst water pipes, and leaky rooves.  

* Other Topics (Essay 1): 

To save space-and-time, I have bullet-pointed many other points my  first essay makes. To show you how comprehensive it is. So, you better understand the scope, depth, and value of my 1st essay. Thus, the below  topics-list, summarizes most of my 1st essay’s remaining topics. Such as:  

1) How the book’s different modes of transportation—trains, trams,  cabs, sleds—cause gruesome accidents & long delays;  

2) How the novel’s Soviets try to turn Russians into new men; 

3) How Soviet peasant characters, especially hypothetical Ukrainians, protest the seizure of their crops by first locking Soviets inside their  village barns. Then burning down those barns, with Soviet officials locked inside, singing peasant hymns to drown out their death  screams; 

4) How the book’s Soviets cause a wide-variety of diseases in the story  (typhus, scurvy, glanders, and tuberculosis) by dirtying Russia’s cities-and-countryside. Then using a tarry carcinogen named  Carbolic Acid to sanitize these diseases. Sadly, this chemical  disinfectant also kills characters, too. By giving them cancer;  

5) How the novel’s GPU requires travel permits, militia registration,  and local taxes to be paid, for internal Russian travel. To suppress  characters freedom of movement and residence. Not only in regard  to travelling from the city to the country (and vice versa) but also to  ensure that characters live where the government tells them to 

(closed vs open cities); 

6) How the novel prepares characters to accept communism into their  lives. By installing propaganda posters, State banners, and red  slogans, all over Leningrad, depicting the glories of Russians who  believe in, and act for, a collective workers paradise; 

7) How We the Living’s propaganda department further brainwashes  characters at school by making them study (and create scrapbooks)  of Lenin;  

8) How We the Living’s Communist state further propagandizes  characters through Soviet cinema. By creating films that portray life  to be happy & good in Soviet Russia, even though it was hopeless  and doomed. Also, by staging Red ballets, such as The Dance of the  Toilers, where fragile ballerinas wear papier-machete chains on  their thin arms-and-legs—to symbolize their unlimited toil and absolute State submission;  

9) How an orphan from a Soviet reformatory named Sasha Chernova,  fights to improve the novel’s terrible working conditions by  spurring workers to overthrow the Soviet government at their  factories;  

10) How, because the book’s Soviet government views private  property as evil, they deliberately inflate characters rubles. Until,  they are forced to sell (or trade) their family heirlooms for basic  living materials, such as food, kerosene, and industrial goods;  

11) How We the Living’s Soviet government disabuses land-hungry  peasants of the foolish notion that the land is theirs; that the land  belongs to the people who till it. Since, it doesn’t. Rather, peasants  feel cheated and tricked when they learn that the Soviet Revolution  does not provide peasants with their own land to cultivate, as  promised. But rather that all land belongs to the state;

12) How the novel’s peasants are arrested or deported for having  taken part in commerce. For having sold their grain on the open  market. For farmers harvests are stolen by Soviet requisitioning  detachments, especially if they discover that rather than fulfilling  State agricultural quotas farmers try to sell their grain on the open  market;  

13) How requisitioning brigades steal peasant’s food to build up  Soviet industry on their bones. Which, ultimately, causes the book’s  peasants to hide, or steal back, part of their harvest every night;  

14) How the book’s peasants “burn the local Karl Marx club [in the]  Vasilkino, Svershkoe, and Petrovshino, [villages], assassinate  twenty-six party members in outlying village districts, [raze] eight  [communist] clubhouses, three [red] schools and [one] communal  farm storehouse” (377, 378, 407). So, they can reclaim local  administration of village affairs;  

15) How the presence of an anarchist revolutionary named Nester  Makhno—during a train ride from Crimea to Saint Petersburg— shows readers how Russia’s underground criminal networks also  hated the Soviets. For Makhno, and his supports, the Makhnovists,  called for the end of violent requisitioning of peasant food, the 

elimination of heavy peasant taxes, and the expulsion of brigades  who were assigned to take peasant possessions. Accordingly, the  Makhnovists banditry was directed against the government and  officialdom rather than against Russian citizens;  

16) How a GPU officer named Andrei Taganov uses his party card as  a butcher’s knife. By executing crowds of thousands of starving  peasants who besiege the barns where their stolen food is held.  Where food detachments had stored the grain that had been taken  from them. As a temporary staging point to transport that grain to  urban areas and the army; 

17) How this same GPU officer, Andrei Taganov, turns on  communism. When he realizes that Marxism does not value human  life. For Andrei is a tragic example of a man who is broken by the  realization of what believing in Marxism really means. Since, after  learning from Kira, that the individual is worthless before the state,  Andrei questions and judges his Party. Then, after gathering  sufficient evidence of Communism’s evil and his massive error, he  breaks with Marxism;  

18) How the book’s apartment buildings often collapse, without  warning, all over the city, due to lack of Soviet upkeep. Since,  houses in Saint Petersburg long in need of repair, crumble into a pile  of dusted rubble. Horrifying workers when they return home from a  long day of toiling for the state. Since, when they get home they see  that their homes, together with their private property in them— which they worked hard to accumulate over a long time—vanishes  in an instant;  

19) How the book’s communist government makes characters trade their coupons for food, manufactured goods, and other items, they  do not need, and do not want. (Like when Lydia takes soap and  herring at a university co-operative even though she does not need  these products);  

20) How the novel’s Soviet Union exposes characters to diseases— typhus, scurvy, glanders, and tuberculosis—because they can’t keep  their country clean. Causing characters to rub carnation oil, even  kerosene, on their heads, bodies, and clothes, to ward away disease  carrying lice;  

21) How characters have to cope with lousy Soviet manufactured  goods. Such as kerosene stoves that explode, matches that don’t  light, shoes with cardboard soles, dim lightbulbs that burn out quickly, handkerchiefs that tear easily, clothes with missing sleeves, loose handles that fall off pots, and foreign objects baked into loaves  of bread;  

22) How the book’s Soviet government damages people health by making them stand in endless lines during deep winter. Where they  are exposed to strong winds, freezing ice, blinding snow, cold sleet,  driven rain, and large hail, in front of communal kitchens,  university co-operatives, state offices, state hospitals, and other  provision centers, in all-weather winter conditions. Waiting in lines  that stretch around the corner. As the queue-up for hours, days even, 

waiting for their meager rations. Contracting frost bit, open sores,  respiratory infections, joint pain, dry skin, sore throats, colds & flues, while they wait;  

23) How the novel’s Soviet minders eliminate characters freedom of  movement. Until, they can’t live, and travel, where they want. Instead, characters need to furnish travel permits on train rides,  and secure permission, from multiple authorities, for any overnight  stay, anywhere. (Especially, stays over 48 hours).  

For example, when the Argounova’s take a train from Crimea to Saint Petersburg, GPU agents kick open their train doors,  several times night. Sternly ordering them to hand over their  “travel documents.” Similarly, when Leo and Kira try to travel to  a beach, they need to register their stay with the local militia  department, and pay local taxes, to obtain permits as transient  guests. Just to get permission for a one-night stay at a nearby beach town.  

We are also told that part of the reason why the authorities restrict characters ability to live and travel where they want, was “to limit the rural exodus of starving Ukrainian peasants who  were fleeing from the countryside to the cities in search of food.”  

24) How the book Soviet State banishes university students and  alleged counterrevolutionaries to Siberia. (Like, Sasha, Irina, and  other anonymous university students). Where 9 out of 10 prisoners, like them, die within a year of being imprisoned. Due to overwork,  starvation, freezing, hunger, lack of medical attention, slow  mistreatment, and treatable diseases (scurvy & ulcers). Since,  when imprisoned, most prisoners undertake huge projects for the  state that can only be carried out by penal labor. Projects like dam  building, railway construction, bridge and road building, coal  mining, and petroleum extraction.  

25) How characters wages are automatically garnished (without their  knowledge) for social insurance; membership dues for the  Proletarian Society of Chemical Defense; taxes for Russia’s Red  Air Fleet; and taxes to liquidate illiteracy. 

26) How the book’s office managers will not hire the bourgeoise.  Since, they remember that “when they had been jobless in the old  days their bourgeoise brothers would not hire them.” Thus, to get  revenge, these hiring managers tell hopeful job seekers, like Leo,  that “No. They have no job opening. And none are expected.” They  say this because they think “it will do bourgeoise people good to  learn how it feels” to not be hired.  

Thus, the cruel refusal of even the right to make a living for  characters with an aristocratic past shows readers how strongly  former aristocrats are discriminated against. Ultimately, suffering  from a frightful lack of work, simply because they are high-born;  

27) How the book’s Soviet officials conduct nationwide purges of  universities—like the Technological Institute, for example, or the Petrograd State University, for instance, or the Art Academy, case  in point—by inventing purge questionnaires, which they distribute  in schools and at work, asking Russians: if they are party members;  if they are in a trade union; what their job is; what their parents  background is; what they did before, during, and after the  revolution? If these people where once wealthy, or highborn, or  suspected of having the wrong social origins, they are gleefully 

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tossed out of their studies and jobs, during the Great Purge of  1936;  

28) How the book’s Soviet State purges Communist party members who had been in the party well before the 1917 revolution. Party  members, like Stephan Timoshenko, Andrei Taganov, and Leon  Trotsky, who dare to say that the Party has betrayed the principles  of the original Marxist revolution. Thus, for whistleblowing, these  revolutionaries are kicked as traitors. For standing on principle. 

For telling Soviet officials that “they’ve lost the battle, strangled  the revolution, sold out the people, for power, brute power.” For  saying, like Leon Trotsky did, that Russia has become “a  degenerate workers state controlled by an undemocratic  bureaucracy,” which would eventually be overthrown by another  political revolution; by a representative “worker’s democracy.” And, from then on, “all decisions would be made democratically,  according to workers principles of socialism;”  

29) How party members also feel that Communism has deceived them. Because though they “joined the party to make a better world  for poor, forlorn, people,” the positive changes promised to them  by the original revolution are being betrayed. Since, the real  beneficiaries of the revolution are not ordinary, everyday,  characters like Stephan Timoshenko and Andrei Taganov. But,  instead are cruel Soviet politicians, corrupt merchants, and other  governmental minders, who betrayed the revolution in the name of  enforcing it. Men, like Pavel Syerov, Karp Morozov, and Victor  Dunaev;  

30) How We the Living suggests the Soviet practice of slaughtering its  own Red Army by placing a second secret police army behind it that would fire forward so nobody could move back. The novel  suggests this by recounting two famous Russian land battles—the  Battle of Petrovshino and the Battle of Samsonova—where  thousands of Russian soldiers were also gunned down mercilessly by the people behind them. By Stalin’s own personal army that  would rip the dog tags of off slain Russian troops. So, Russian’s did not know that their own troops were being murdered by their  own soldiers;  

31) How the book’s State Textile Trust makes clothes for characters. Like 3 dresses, with 6 print patterns, every poor woman who wants  new State clothes must wear. Ultimately, making women – like  Kira and Irina – lose all joy in their new garments, since they wear  similar (or identical) dresses that thousands of other women  already have. Making women feel like inmates of a huge  orphanage, or asylum, because they all look the same; 

32) How the novel’s government tears down symbols of a culture,  faith, or belief, opposed to its own collectivist ideology. To this  end, hundreds of the novel’s “churches are [either] destroyed,” or  allowed to go into a state of collapse, since Christians believe in  the sanctity of an individual’s soul. “Greek statues [are]  destroyed” because Pagans believe in individual heroism,  especially on the battlefield. Aristocratic “coats-of-arms” are  ripped off their hinges and burned to ash because lords in an  aristocracy respect their citizens individuality. The Czar’s  “imperial eagle,” is removed from in front of his opera box at the  “Mikhailovsky Theatre” because the Czars were much more  tolerant of individual initiative;  

33) How the novels closure of churches, mosques, and synagogues  causes Christians, Moslems, and Jews, to be mocked and mangled.  This also causes a deeply Christian character named Lydia  Argounova to call the Soviets “sacrilegious apostates [who will all] 

burn in hell [because] they defy God!” Because they’ve “opened  the sacred relics [to take] gold ikons,” religious heirlooms, and  other historical treasures, from churches. Including church bells  that are melted down for scrap metal, since Communists claim that the sound of bells ringing on Sundays disturbs the peace of  atheists;  

34) How characters are injured, maimed, or killed by dangerous  transportation. For example, an anonymous peasant woman is  decapitated when she falls asleep at night riding a train. Since,  when sleeping, she slides off the hitch (or buffer) in-between cars,  is pulled under the train, and is dragged, for a few minutes. Until  her head is cut off. Similarly, a man named Mitya Vessiolkin cuts  off one of his hands, when he tries to jump onto a moving  tramway. Likewise, another man named Boris Koulikov “cuts off  both of his legs, [when he] tries to jump into a tramway moving at  full speed.” Kira, almost dies, twice. Once, when she is almost  grinded off of a tram platform, by a passing truck. And, again,  when she tries to leap onto Leo’s departing train, just as it is about  to go into a tunnel. Evidently, Soviet citizens resort to these  desperate measures to not only avoid waiting for weeks for a train  to appear, but also because there are “no reliable schedules and  time tables,” with the Soviets in charge;  

35) How the book’s Russian government drives characters, like Leo  Kovalensky, to be black-market food speculators. Since, they not  only fire him from translating Russian books into English, French,  and German but also because he refuses to teach English to  Russian sailors of the Red Baltic Fleet, at nights, for no pay. How,  though, after being fired, Leo clears bricks from collapsed houses,  clears snow from the city’s streets, and constructs the pillars of a  bridge, eventually even these low-level jobs dry up. So, because  Leo is sick-and-tired of facing bared door after barred door when  he looks for work—with the same response; no opening, no job,  no work—eventually, Leo sells stolen State food to scores of shops  all-across Russia. For all Leo cares about is giving himself and his  girlfriend Kira a taste of wealth before he dies: “ ‘So they shoot  food speculators? Why don’t they give us a chance at something  else?’ ”; 

36) How bribery, extortion, and corruption are common practices in  We the Living. Since, Alexander bribes an apartment manager for  housing; Kira bribes an Upravdom to get a tenant kicked out of her  house; Karp Morozov bribes a Russian for space to run a black 

market food store; and, a hiring manger asks Leo for a bribe in  exchange for a translation job. Evidently, bribery, extortion, and  Vzyatka, become everyday practices in We the Living. Since, survival, under Communism, requires lawbreaking. This is also  why the novel’s Marxists steal State food from the State railway  station—then sell it in an illegal food store—while high Soviet  officials, like Pavel Syerov, escape punishment for their  involvement;  

37) How We the Living’s government muzzles the free press. By not  only shutting down all non-Bolshevik newspapers but also by  creating a placard newspaper know as The Wall Newspaper. This  newspaper, which is posted on the wall of every workplace, faults,  or praises, characters for their social (or anti-social) behavior.  Since, this Wall Newspaper is the voice of social activity that gives  constructive proletarian criticism on character’s social behavior.  Awarding social credits for State approved behavior, and social  demerits, for un-Marxism like conduct. (A high score leads to job  security, at least for a while, while a low score gets characters  fired);  

38) How State informers vigilantly spy-on characters. So, they can  trade information to the government for some type of reward.  (Like more food, better treatment, or the permission to live alone,  for example). So, to gather this data, citizen informants watch  characters intently. Hoping to raise State alarm bells for their  questionable wealth, doubtful conversations, and unusual actions.  Often, denouncing characters, simply for having a bourgeoise  bearing and attitude; 

39) And, lastly, how the novel’s characters have no right to face an  objective justice system, based on objective rules, and rational  procedures. Instead, characters are subject to courts of class justice,  where social revenge becomes the order of the day;  

* Incomplete synopsis. Learn more, by reading Emre’s book.