In February of 1917, Ayn Rand witnessed the first shots of the Russian Revolution, and later that year she witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution as well. In order to escape the fighting, her family went to the Crimea, where Rand finished high school.
When Rand and her family returned from the Crimea, she became a student of the Leningrad State University.
As a student at Leningrad State University, she studied history and became acquainted with the works of Plato and Aristotle. She took classes in politics, history, law, and writing. After graduating in 1924, she enrolled in the State Institute for Cinematography, hoping to become a screenwriter.
In 1926, she traveled to the United States to visit family members and headed for Hollywood to work as a movie extra and junior screenwriter. Later she changed her name to Ayn Rand.
Rand’s first and most autobiographical novel, We the Living (1936), set in the Soviet Union, was published only after many rejections, owing to widespread sympathy for the Soviet “experiment” among the intellectuals of the day.
In 1943, Rand’s famous book "The Fountainhead" was published. It took her seven years to write the novel. From the 1960's on, she increasingly devoted herself to expounding her views more directly, in such books as ''The Virtue of Selfishness'' (1965) and ''Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal'' (1966).
Ayn Rand argues that capitalism is a necessary good: It is the only social system in which human beings can survive, prosper, and enjoy their lives.
She also served as editor of The Objectivist, a monthly journal, from 1962 to 1971 and wrote The Ayn Rand Letter from 1971 to 1976.
Ayn Rand - writer and philosopher
