Ayn Rand (Russia, 1905 - USA, 1982), known for her atheism and liberalism, which led her to formulate a radical critique of Soviet reality. As she herself states, it is a novel about man against the State, a story about dictatorship, a critique of the existence of man for the benefit of the State. This work was made into a film in fascist Italy, but the Nazi government of Germany demanded its destruction, as they understood that behind the critique of the Soviet Union there was a critique of any totalitarianism.
Through a group of people living in St. Petersburg, the impact of the revolution on society is exposed, denouncing how the shift from submission to the tsars to submission to the party had occurred, without experiencing the triumph of freedom and equality. Thus, various criticisms of the old society appear, also in its religious dimension, but especially of the society that was born in 1917 and that the author knew firsthand, until she was able to exile herself to the United States.
The new Soviet morality, with its rejection of any bourgeois manifestation, appears in descriptions of a lifestyle where adultery, a thirst for luxury, and contempt for life abound. The animalization of the person is criticized, but it is justified by the abolition of dignity. The author gathers a set of complex psychologies that mature and develop in a limiting situation.
Written in 1936, in these times of populism that we live today, it surprises with the relevance of its approach, the speeches echoing a century later by some politicians, and its vibrant ethical tension.