Nikolai Chernyshevskii and Ayn Rand

Nikolai Chernyshevskii and Ayn Rand: Russian Nihilism Travels to America argues that the core commitments of the nihilist movement of the 1860s made their way to 20th century America via the thought of Ayn Rand. While mid-nineteenth-century Russian nihilism has generally been seen as part of a radical tradition that culminated in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the author argues that nihilisms intellectual trajectory was in fact quite different. Analysis of such sources as Nikolai Chernyshevskiis What is to Be Done? (1863) and Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged (1957), archival research in Rands papers, and broad attention to late-nineteenth century Russian intellectual history all lead the author to conclude that nihilisms legacy is deeply implicated in one of Americas most widely-read philosophers of capitalism and libertarian freedom.