We the Living

Ayn Rand's 1936 first novel — her most autobiographical — depicting three young people's struggle for survival and individuality in the early Soviet Union, based on her own experience in Petrograd before she emigrated — a direct portrayal of Soviet totalitarianism from within.

Creates the most personal fictional account of the Soviet crushing of individual life — We the Living's account of how the Soviet system destroys the exceptional individual not through dramatic violence but through the steady grinding down of all aspiration and difference provides the experiential argument for Rand's subsequent philosophy.