Ayn Rand was born on February 2, 1905, in St. Petersburg, Russia, as Alissa Rosenbaum. During her younger years, she lived a comfortable, affluent, middle-class existence. Her father had become a chemist despite quotas on Jews studying at the university. Her mother subscribed her to children's literary magazines, which inspired her to write her own stories. (According to the Rand mythology, she decided to become a writer at age nine.) In 1917, she and her family witnessed the Russian Revolution as the Communist Party took over the government. The family lived in relative poverty from that point on, for her father did not have many friends in the new government.
At age 16 in 1921, Rand...
