What She Left Behind

This essay sheds additional light on the biographies and fates of Ayn Rand’s closest relatives in the Soviet Union and abroad after young Alissa Rosenbaum left the “country of workers and peasants” in 1926 for the pursuit of a new life in the United States. Previously unknown facets of her relatives’ lives were intertwined with the complex and often tragic historical events of the first half of the twentieth century. Among these relatives are victims of the German blockade of Leningrad, a music teacher, a European bacteriologist, a doctor who was twice a refugee, and a Soviet Medical Service Corps officer.