I have previously blogged about the massive impact that Ayn Rand had as the leading modern popularizer of libertarianism and the recent controversy over whether she is an asset or liability for free market advocates today. An interesting question (at least to me) is whether Rand was the most influential Russian immigrant to the United States. To my mind, her only serious competitors for the title are aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky, who designed the first mass-produced helicopter, among other achievements, and novelist Vladimir Nabokov. I exclude cultural figures like composers Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff, who came to the US late in life, but did most of their important work elsewhere. Like Rand, Nabokov and Sikorsky left Russia in large part because of ideological opposition to the communist regime. Interestingly, Sikorsky was precisely the type of anti-communist inventor and entrepreneur who could have been the hero of an Ayn Rand novel, but for the fact that he was a very religious Orthodox Christian. Nabokov has far more “high culture” cache than Rand and his novels have greater technical merit. But I think it’s clear that Rand has influenced the world views of far more people; she certainly has had many more readers. Even among those who have read Nabokov, I doubt that many have significantly changed their views on any important moral or political issues as a result.
Google founder Sergei Brin is a dark horse candidate. But I think that internet search engine technology was likely to develop in a roughly google-like direction even without Brin’s distinctive contributions.
Are there any other candidates I’m missing – besides Senior Conspirator Eugene Volokh, of course?
UPDATE: Commenters reasonably point out that I omitted some important candidates, such as Irving Berlin, primarily because I had not bothered to check whether these people (mostly Russian Jews) were born in Russia or elsewhere in Eastern Europe. I think it’s fairly clear that some of the others mentioned (e.g. – Isaac Asimov), had a lot less influence than Rand. Asimov was a great science fiction writer, but his influence was largely limited to that field (he did write many non-SF books, but they had little lasting impact). Still others (e.g. – Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Golda Meir) fall under my category of people who made their major achievements outside the US.
Finally, I tend to attribute greater individual influence to those who fundamentally changed the world views of large numbers of people than to innovators in the arts or in technology (except in the rare cases where it can be shown that the technology in question would not have been developed in similar form within a few years anyway). In my view, great influence is a matter of unique impact, rather than contributions that were likely to be interchangeable with those of other similarly situated people. Obviously, other theories of influence are possible, and I’m not going to argue for my approach in detail – at least not in this post.
Anon Y. Mous says:
Issac Asimov. In addition, I think he also has an even higher geek cachet than Rand.
December 8, 2009, 2:34 amJPSobel says:
Isaac Asimov. While remembered as a master of the science fiction genre, his expository writings in popularizing science in the emerging technical society of the twentieth century were of greater significance.
December 8, 2009, 2:34 amIlya Somin says:
Asimov is an interesting choice that I shouldn’t have overlooked. But I think most of his influence was confined to the Sci Fi genre, and that he didn’t sell nearly as many books or influence nearly as many people’s world views as Rand.
December 8, 2009, 2:42 amSplunge says:
George Gamow, Vladimir Zworykin, Selman Waksman, Sergei Rachmaninoff.
December 8, 2009, 3:02 amMark N. says:
Sergei Federov probably outstrips Rand in terms of name recognition, though what precise “influence” hockey players have is a more murky question.
December 8, 2009, 3:08 amIlya Somin says:
I mentioned Rachmaninoff in the original post, and explained why I don’t think he takes precedence over Rand.
December 8, 2009, 3:08 amThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Russian Emigres says:
[...] below about intellectuals and inventors who left Soviet Russia for the U.S. reminded me of this poem by Okudzhava. It’s unfortunately only accessible to Russian speakers, but we have a few of those among our [...]
December 8, 2009, 3:10 amMatthew Carberry says:
Baryshnikov influenced dance, and a lot of American ladies.
December 8, 2009, 4:28 amCountDuckula says:
My pick is David Sarnoff. Founder of NBC, also worked at RCA.
“Google founder Sergei Brin is a dark horse candidate. But I think that internet search engine technology was likely to develop in a roughly google-like direction even without Brin’s distinctive contributions. ”
So… why wasn’t literature likely to develop in a roughly Rand-like direction even without Rand’s distinctive contributions?
December 8, 2009, 6:12 amleo marvin says:
Anna Kournikova
December 8, 2009, 6:41 amAnatid says:
Rand has sold 25.5 million copies, while Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy alone has sold 20 million copies (could not find a number for total Asimov sales). He’s written over 300 books – and they’re a lot easier to read than Rand, even though some are equally poignant.
Asimov went in-depth to postulate a number of crucial (and novel, and elegant) questions regarding the nature of personhood, using science fiction as his vehicle. He set precedent for the field. Every roboticist or AI programmer I know has the Three Laws in mind, quietly lurking over their shoulder.
The beautiful thing about science fiction, flying cars aside, is that sometimes it simply becomes science. Rocket ship to the moon? Cars that can navigate for you? Organs grown from your own cells in a vat? Imaging of potentially-habitable worlds around other stars? The nerds of yesterday and today have made these things possible, and no small number of ‘em grew up with their minds full of sci-fi.
And no small number of sci-fi authors grew up with their minds full of Asimov.
December 8, 2009, 6:44 amMichael R. Brown says:
Perhaps Leon Theremin. And, not really seriously, Vladimir Horowitz.
December 8, 2009, 6:46 amSteven Lubet says:
Hyman Rickover was born in what is now Poland, but was then the Russian Empire.
December 8, 2009, 6:48 amHavoc Jack says:
There’s a general line of thought that says that artistic contributions are more or less unique, while technical advances have an underlying nature that can by discovered by any more or less competent investigator or inventor. So if you ever get stuck in a time paradox where you have to choose between the existence of Isaac Newton or Alexandre Eiffel, choose Eiffel. While Newton’s laws of motion might be more important overall, somebody is bound to discover them eventually, whereas the world might never see another Eiffel tower. I’m not sure I buy this line of thought.
I’ve only heard of Baryshnikov through the Simpsons. I’m disinclined to vote for him.
Are you sure Ayn Rand sold more books than Asimov? He wrote an awful lot of books. I didn’t find actual numbers. I’ll grant you that more people have changed their worldview from Ayn Rand.
December 8, 2009, 6:52 ambogden mash says:
This sounds like confirmation bias to me.
But then again, my first thought was Yakov Smirnoff.
December 8, 2009, 6:52 amChris Grainger says:
Agreed with CountDuckula, and to act as if Google’s only game-changer has been internet search is ridiculous. Google has completely reshaped the way the internet works, and particularly the advertisement-driven business scheme. Not only have they been a primary catalyst for the evolution of the internet (which, in turn, has completely changed American life), but their influence dramatically shifts the scene in software from mobile phones to a browser to even an OS. This isn’t even considering the web apps that will likely become more and more important in coming year.
Further, they provide the model of a huge US-based employer in a time when it is a truism for companies to ship jobs overseas for cheaper labour. Brin also has overseen Google’s investment in green tech. Their philosophy has been that if the government won’t do it, they will. Check out google.org.
I bet if you polled under 30′s ‘What has changed your life more: Atlas Shrugged or Google?’, Google would win hands down.
December 8, 2009, 6:53 amChris Grainger says:
What about Vladimir Zworykin? Surely television has been more influential for people’s world views than Ayn Rand?
December 8, 2009, 6:59 amChris Grainger says:
Agreed with CountDuckula, and to act as if Google’s only game-changer has been internet search is ridiculous.
I bet if you polled under 30′s ‘What has changed your life more: Atlas Shrugged or Google?’, Google would win hands down.
December 8, 2009, 7:01 amWas Ayn Rand the Most Influential Russian Immigrant to the United States? says:
[...] the story on Topix Posted in [...]
December 8, 2009, 7:07 amSandy MacHoots says:
Tadeusz Kościuszko. Russian-born.
December 8, 2009, 7:23 amMatt says:
A border-line case might be Isaiah Berlin. He was born in the Russian Empire (what would become Lithuania, if I remember correctly) and emigrated from St. Petersburg, but would not have been considered “Russian” by Russians (as he was Jewish) and I don’t know if he considered himself Russian at all, though of course he had an important and enduring interest in Russian intellectual history and thought. He was certainly more influential on academic thinking in the US and Brittan than Rand was, but certainly less so in the wider world and, I think, is unlikely to a very lasting impact, as his approaches to both politics and intellectual history have fallen from favor and his personal influence diminishes ever further.
Another interesting case is Eduard Lemonov, who emigrated in the 70′s but moved back eventually to Russia. His writing is much better than Rand’s, to my mind, though not nearly as famous. His influence these days, such that it is, is mostly inside Russia, where his political party is basically the only part of the coalition that Kasparov is part of that has any popular appeal at all. He also quite clearly scares the authorities there, as he’s been arrested, jailed, and harassed quite regularly, as have his young supporters, many of whom are essentially political prisoners now. Unfortunately, his political views vary from mildly to extremely unpleasant, so I can’t say I’m very eager for him to gain even further influence, despite a dislike of his enemies.
December 8, 2009, 7:25 amSoronel Haetir says:
Ilya,
I would disagree with any claim that Asimov’s science fiction was his most important work. Unlike many other authors a great deal of his fiction has not aged well. However his nonfiction remains relevant in many fields and makes material accessible to non-specialist readers.
I would certainly agree that Asimov’s influence is not focused laser sharp on any particular subject, however that just allows for more subtle choices by a much larger population.
December 8, 2009, 7:27 amSteven Lubet says:
Meyer Lansky
December 8, 2009, 7:32 amAmiable Dorsai says:
Alexander P. de Seversky has a claim. Victory Through Airpower influenced strategic thinking during and after WWII. He had a huge number of aeronautical patents, as well. Our WWII airplanes probably wouldn’t have been as good as they were, without him.
December 8, 2009, 7:51 amDaniel Charlies says:
Solzhenitsyn. The warner. Same as Rand, more real. More influential. We could quibble over “immigrant” definition, though?
December 8, 2009, 8:04 amCountDuckula says:
I am relatively sure that Asimov has sold more books than Rand, if only because Asimov was more prolific.
I understand your point about technical advances versus artistic advances. My reply is two-fold:
First, I was primarily mocking Somin’s dismissal of Brin’s accomplishments – as if you can just expect technology “to develop” on its own. Someone has to actually innovate, and Brin is that innovator. The notion that “someone else would have done it” is only really convincing if the world has an infinite number of people. Because there are a finite number of people, they can only do a finite number of things. If person A invents X instead of Y, there’s no guarantee that Y gets invented anyway.
Second, I think people have an overly romantic notion of artistic creation. You can’t divorce Ayn Rand’s authorship and subject matter from her experiences in the Russian revolution, can you? (Of course, Somin doesn’t.) The revolution is a necessary condition for her to write on the subjects she did. Given the ascent of collectivism in the first half of the twentieth century, don’t you think SOMEONE would have gotten around to writing some pro-libertarian fiction if Rand hadn’t? That is, if you buy into that whole “someone else would have done it” thing. Heck, maybe someone else would have done it better than she did (which isn’t really asking much, either).
December 8, 2009, 8:09 ammrshl says:
Is it wise to minimize Brin’s contribution so quickly? While search innovation may indeed have proceeded towards Brin’s and Page’s algorithm insights, the company the two men founded has had a profound effect not just on America, but on the entire world.
Consider the company’s goal: to organize much of the world’s information and make it available for free. Book Search. Google Scholar (including free access to case law). All of Life Magazines photos. Google Earth. Free turn-by-turn directions over mobile phone.
Not to mention Google’s efforts to reinvent web-based email, which millions use.
And in each case, the company’s ability to maximize ad revenue with unintrusive text ads has lowered the price consumers pay to $0.
Free access to information of all kinds (not just web information). It’s a big idea and someone needed to dream that dream and invent a model to support it. I’m not so sure that happens without Brin and Page. Microsoft has struggled to play catch up, but do you think they would have spent cash building a streamlined interface for Patent search? For free?
Google is a lot more than search.
*and yes I recognize Google does get attention to ads and logs of our own web activity, so it’s not COMPLETELY free. but anyone reading this blog knows there’s no such thing as a free…you know.
December 8, 2009, 8:18 amWidmerpool says:
Well, who would challenge the preeminence of someone like Asimov, but let’s not forget Shmuel Gelbfisch (name changed to “Samuel Goldwyn”) and Yakovlevich Mayer. Mayer was from Minsk and Gelbfisch from Warsaw (which was part of the Russian Empire when he was born). Those two formed a tiny company that had some passing involvement in an obscure business that involved convincing people to pay to see pictures rapidly flashed upon a blank screen. I think its symbol had something to do with a roaring lion. Wacky!
December 8, 2009, 8:25 amMenachem Mendel says:
Readers might be interested in the book Russian Jews on Three Continents: Identity, Integration, and Conflict by Larissa Remennick.
December 8, 2009, 8:28 amPatHMV says:
Yakov Smirnoff! ;-)
December 8, 2009, 8:33 amhereisjeff says:
Alexander Solzhenitsyn? Was not an emigre?
December 8, 2009, 8:48 amSmooth, like a Rhapsody says:
Beyond college campi, what real influence has Ayn (you ahrr to intelligent to beleef in gott) Rand had?
December 8, 2009, 9:02 amThe economic libertarian message is today mainly carried by a group of people who are more committed to banning gay marriage than to eliminating the dept of education.
Interesting that it took until comment 24 to see Solzhenitsyn’s name. If this poll had been taken 25 years ago, before the Wall fell, I think his name would have been at the top.
byomtov says:
I agree with Widmerpool that Goldwyn and Mayer clearly outrank Rand. Of course, I think lots of people do, and her fans exaggerate her importance.
In any case, let’s not overlook the large-scale Russian (especially Jewish) immigration around the beginning of the 20th century to escape not Communism but the Czars. I suspect that if we looked for people who immigrated as children then we’d be surprised. And what about parents? Do Jacob and Rosa Gershwin count?
December 8, 2009, 9:07 amnone says:
my god, enough of the ayn rand sycophancy! she was a 3rd rate philosopher and an even WORSE novelist. her renown is owed primarily to the existence of corporate-funded and millionaire-funded organizations set up to spread the fiction that she was important
December 8, 2009, 9:13 amEx parte McCardle says:
Ilya’s assertion that Vladimir Nabokov’s novels “have greater technical merit” than Rand’s really should win some kind of award for Grand Understatement. It’s like saying that Wallace Stevens’s poems have greater technical merit than those of Jimmy Carter.
December 8, 2009, 9:17 amegd says:
I suppose Yul Brynner doesn’t count as particularly influential, but is a very prominent Russian actor, likewise Milla Jovovich (born in the Ukraine in ’75, which should count).
But given your original list, I think Igor Sikorsky has been more influential than Rand, if only because his grand ideas have been implemented.
December 8, 2009, 9:29 amAnatid says:
What’s the principle that states that a discovery or invention, once someone else has discovered/invented it, becomes obvious?
Not to mention, many discoveries are partial or complete accident – galvanized rubber, penicillin, LSD-25. It’s possible that eventually, someone else might have made the same leap, but it might be years or decades or even centuries later.
And as you also said, the surrounding socioeconomic factors can also play a huge role. Would we have developed teflon when we did without the space program? What user interface might our computers have if Doug Engelbart hadn’t invented the mouse? Would MDMA ever have become a recreational drug if Sasha Shulgin hadn’t hauled it out of the research closet of lost molecules? Would Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection have been any different if he’d read the papers of his contemporary, geneticist Gregor Mendel? Would the nameless hero who discovered how to ferment alcohol ever have spread booze across Europe if Europeans didn’t carry the mutation to metabolize ethanol?
Some inventions, like the soup bowl or uno-octium, seem inevitable. Others, like Caesar salad, might never have happened save for the right idea in the right mind in the right place at the right time.
December 8, 2009, 9:34 amGW says:
George Balanchine.
December 8, 2009, 9:38 amDavid McCourt says:
The great Irving Berlin (born Israel Baline in Russia) towers above a marginal figure like Ayn Rand. Quite a few rungs down, even George Balanchine gives her a run for her money.
December 8, 2009, 9:41 amSeamus says:
David McCourt just beat me. I’d vote for Irving Berlin, too.
December 8, 2009, 9:48 amSnaphappy says:
If I were a blogger, I would blog about the arrogance of “it seems to me.” Ilya thinks he knows enough about the influence of Russian immigrants to say that Rand has maybe two or three competitors for the “most influential” Russian immigrant across presumably all fields of art, literature, science, and philosophy. Sure, he asks whether there is anyone he missed, but the post is written with the authority of someone who Knows What He Is Talking About. Setting aside how to measure “influence” when one’s greatest accomplishment is spreading a marginal political philosophy, it turned out that he missed the inventor of the television and giants of science fiction, movies, song, and dance.
Personally, I’m far too insecure to put myself out there with a list of four of the most influential anything, because I have an idea of the vast extent of that which I don’t know.
December 8, 2009, 9:54 amSnaphappy says:
And by the way, I vote for Orly Taitz.
December 8, 2009, 9:57 amDavid McCourt says:
Snappy, but not happy.
December 8, 2009, 10:11 amyao says:
I’d nominate Irving Berlin, born in 1888 and arrived in America in 1893.
December 8, 2009, 10:21 amnone says:
Orly Taitz, seconded. WHERE’S THE LONG FORM?!?!?
December 8, 2009, 10:27 amDavid Bernstein says:
You need to qualify this; are you talking about people who emigrated from the Russian or Soviet Empire, which would include tons of influential Jewish immigrants, or just individuals who emigrated from ethnic Russian territory, as Rand did?
December 8, 2009, 10:53 amuh_clem says:
The list so far in order of appearance:
Issac Asimov
December 8, 2009, 10:59 amGeorge Gamow
Vladimir Zworykin
Selman Waksman
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Mikhayl Baryshnikov
David Sarnoff. (Founder of NBC)
Anna Kournikova
Leon Theremin
Vladimir Horowitz
Hyman Rickover
Yakov Smirnoff
Vladimir Zworykin
Tadeusz Kościuszko
Isaiah Berlin
Meyer Lansky
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Shmuel Gelbfisch (name changed to “Samuel Goldwyn”) Yakovlevich Mayer (his partner)
Yul Brynner
Igor Sikorsky
George Balanchine
Irving Berlin
Orly Taitz
fsfsfsfsfsfsfs says:
No, google is sui generis, and would have looked utterly different without Brin. Possibly some of the page rank technology would have been the same, but the ethos and culture, combined with the technology, of google was so different from anything before that it strains credulity to think changing the founder would not have dramatically altered it.
With google, not only did you have the search technology, you also had the clean web design, the use of AJAX, gmail, AdWords, Google News, the IPO auction, google books, and on and on.
I was thinking Grigory Perelman, but he was only here for a couple years, I don’t think he counts.
December 8, 2009, 11:07 amgreg says:
I would sure as hell never tell Kosciuszko he was Russian-born. He was born in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and emigrated from the same country in 1775, following the Partition of 1772. He returned to the Commonwealth in the 1780s and fought against Russia in the Polish-Russian War of 1792 that lead to the second partition. After which he led an uprising against the Russians until he was wounded and captured.
Though it does mirror my initial thought about how we’re defining “Russian immigrant”. Is it to anyone who lived within the border of the nation of Russia at any point in its history? Or just to people who are ethnically (or at least who self-identify (prior to their emigration) as) Russian? I’m half ethnically Polish, through my father’s grandparents who emigrated from “Russian Poland”, so they were officially Russian immigrants, but they’d have popped you in the nose if you called them Russian.
My vote goes for Asimov. The appeal of his science fiction has influenced many more scientists and engineers over the last 70 years than can easily be calculated.
December 8, 2009, 11:19 amDavid Bernstein says:
If we’re including people born in the Russian Empire, here are two extremely important Jewish religious leaders, who may in fact turn out in historical retrospect to be the two most significant rabbis in American history: Mordechai Kaplan (founder to Reconstruction, whose influence on American Judaism is immeasurable–think bat mitzvahs, Zionism, JCCs, synagogue youth groups, and more) and Menachem Mendel Schneerson (the late Lubavitcher Rebbe). I don’t know how you would measure their influence versus Rand’s, but in both cases, substantial.
December 8, 2009, 11:28 amnonluddite says:
Lee Harvey Oswald?
December 8, 2009, 11:33 amDavid Bernstein says:
Oh, and while we’re at it, Gold Meir was born in the Russian Empire, and immigrated to the U.S. It’s true that she made her name elsewhere, but she is certainly an “influential Russian immigrant to the U.S.”
December 8, 2009, 11:36 amvirgo says:
So Nabakov’s novels have greater “technical merit” than Rands?
That’s a bit like saying that the excrement pond at the slaughterhouse has a different odor than a rose garden.
December 8, 2009, 11:38 amwinston says:
Mordechai Kaplan perhaps has some influence among a few thousand nutjobs who think the end is near, but he’s unknown to most (rational) people.
December 8, 2009, 11:40 amuh_clem says:
Looking over the list, there are several very influential people, but nobody who developed a following as devoted as Rand’s. If you measure influence by depth rather than breadth Rand’s the winner. She’s is tremendously influential to a fairly narrow following, but not terribly influential to the culture at large. More like L. Ron Hubbard or Werner Erhardt than Asimov or Brin or Berlin.
December 8, 2009, 11:41 amnonsense says:
“Google founder Sergei Brin is a dark horse candidate. But I think that internet search engine technology was likely to develop in a roughly google-like direction even without Brin’s distinctive contributions.”
I see, so the co-founder of on of the most successful corporations in the world whose technology is used by (probably) hundreds of millions of Americans every day, may not have had as much impact as someone whose main achievement is inspiring feelings of self-satisfaction among bed-wetters.
B.S.
December 8, 2009, 11:44 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Asimov’s popularized science, which I read as a middle schooler, influenced me to focus on science rather than English or history, as my parents expected. I loved SF from all kinds of folks – Heinlein, Bradbury, etc. – but the nonfiction stuff was real and it sucked me in.
Bet I’m not the only one.
December 8, 2009, 11:52 amArkady says:
Ah come on, Ilya. For sheer influence — through the medium they and others created and the works thereof — can anyone top these guys?
I really don’t think so.
December 8, 2009, 11:54 amDavid Bernstein says:
What the heck are you talking about? End is near? What does that have to do with Mordechai Kaplan (who was a rationalist)?
December 8, 2009, 11:58 ambyomtov says:
Let’s add Wassily Leontief.
December 8, 2009, 12:04 pmdearieme says:
Barack Obama – though if he ever releases his Birth Certificate I might have to withdraw his nomination.
December 8, 2009, 12:06 pmGrover_Cleveland says:
There’s a useful Wikipedia category: Russian immigrants to the United States.
The ones that jump out at me are Isaac Asimov, Irving Berlin, Al Jolson, Louis Mayer (of MGM), Vladimir Nabokov, Marina Oswald Porter (widow of Lee Harvey Oswald), Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ayn Rand, David Sarnoff (founder of NBC), Igor Sikorsky, Igor Stravinsky, Sam Warner (of Warner Bros) and Vladimir Zworykin (involved in the invention of television).
December 8, 2009, 12:25 pmDavid McCourt says:
Isaiah Berlin might have been born in Russia, but he never emigrated to the U.S. For most of his adult life, he was a citizen of Oxford.
December 8, 2009, 12:26 pmCan't find a good name says:
Samuel Goldwyn and Louis B. Mayer were not actually partners in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio; Goldwyn had left Goldwyn Pictures Corporation before it was merged into MGM. (And Louis B. Mayer doesn’t seem to have ever used “Yakovlevich” as his first name, although it may have been his original middle name.)
December 8, 2009, 12:28 pmguy in the veal calf office says:
Egad, what a collection of nerds (typed affectionately)–
Igor Lirianov and Sergei Federov revolutionized an actual popular endeavor in this country.
Alex Ovechkin has stunned more eyes with his brilliance in the last 4 years than Rand has in the past 30. So have Anna Kournikova and Maria Sharapova.
Nikolay Davidenko has more humor in his left pinky than Rand and her coterie combined and has surpassed Rand’s impact on book making.
December 8, 2009, 12:35 pmNedLudd says:
Didn’t anyone mention Irving Berlin? Here’s a guy who redefined American music.
December 8, 2009, 12:49 pmDonald Kilmer says:
All of this is boiling down to personal opinion. What is your metric for determining “influential.” If you chart depth (or scope, or breadth) of the ideas on a horizontal axis; and the number of people those ideas affected (based on book sales?) on a vertical axis; I would assume that Rand wins.
A Personal/Aesthetic/Political Philosophy is a very broad topic to devote your professional life to. Rand (and her followers) claim that this is what makes her ideas profound/influential. Even some of her detractors criticize her for be a “system builder” so she has earned the title of philosopher.
Do that math on the book sales. There is probably some overlap so count only the Atlas Shrugged sales. But don’t forget the introduction to her work from used book sales. (i.e., You probably have to at add at least 30% to new book sales to get an accurate count.)
Rand (Alisa Rosenbaum) probably wins this competition hands down.
December 8, 2009, 12:53 pmDavid McCourt says:
Not to be too nerdy, but Larianov is perhaps better described as a Russian expatriate than a Russian immigrant to the U.S. He came to the U.S. when he was traded by Vancouver to an NHL franchise in the U.S., and after 10 years in the U.S., he is now back in Russia, coaching St. Petersburg.
December 8, 2009, 12:56 pmTwirlip says:
There’s no guarantee, no. But most important scientific discoveries have occured to more than one person e.g. Newton and Leibniz separately arriving at the calculus.
That aside, Google did not “invent” anything. They developed a popular internet search engine, but it’s not like a search engine was a new concept in 1997 when Google came on the scene.
December 8, 2009, 12:59 pmTwirlip says:
Philosophers don’t consider her to be a philosopher. Her philosophy was a mishmash of other peoples ideas, chiefly Nietzsche’s.
December 8, 2009, 1:03 pmDavid McCourt says:
Donald Kilmer, Putting it on a chart doesn’t save it from being just “personal opinion.” But here’s your verticle axis:
“Do that math on the book sales.” It appears that Atlas Shrugged has sold between 7 and 10 million copies, which puts it several miles offshore this list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_fiction_authors
Berlin’s “White Christmas” — just one of dozens of Berlin hits — is the best selling song of all time, with Bing Crosby’s single cover of it having sold 50 million copies, and album and other sales adding another 50 million copies.
December 8, 2009, 1:19 pmhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499404574561734246276554.html
Donald Kilmer says:
You either haven’t read Nietzsche, or you haven’t read Rand, or you haven’t read either. Or you read them and don’t understand them.
Rand explicitly rejected Nietzsche everytime she had the opportunity. If you are comparing her fictional characters to Nietzsche’s superman, you are engaging in a very superficial analysis of Rand.
Or is your criticism that she gathered the gems of philosophy from history and put together her own unique system? If it is, then your critique would appear to stem from her place on the timeline of the history of philosophy, and not on her exposition and/or her reinterpretation of those ideas.
December 8, 2009, 1:22 pmWidmerpool says:
Well, if your measuring stick is dedicated followers, I’d like to see how Ayn Rand’s acolytes stand up to the fans of the following MGM films: The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, The Thin Man, An American in Paris, Singin’ in the Rain, Ben Hur, The Big Sleep, The Philadelphia Story, Bad Day at Black Rock, North by Northwest, How the West Was Won, etc., etc., etc. And since we’re talking about Russians, Doctor Zhivago.
December 8, 2009, 1:22 pmguy in the veal calf office says:
David McCourt: Your point is conceded, although Rand didn’t have the option of returning to a communist-free Russian to enjoy the fruits of their labor, like Solzhenitsyn and Rand.
But man, watching Makarov and Professor Lirianov hold that puck in the offensive zone for what seemed like minutes at a time, and then the 5 Russians in Detroit, was just an eye-popping revelation about how Hockey can be played. That meant more to me, and I’d assert many Americans, than reading The Fountainhead and its rape scene.
December 8, 2009, 1:23 pmThales says:
“Rand explicitly rejected Nietzsche everytime she had the opportunity. If you are comparing her fictional characters to Nietzsche’s superman, you are engaging in a very superficial analysis of Rand.”
Really, is that why in the first edition of We the Living some of her characters (sympathetically) quote Nietzsche and why the original plan of the Fountainhead was to begin each part of the book with an epigram from Nietzsche? I would agree that such a comparative analysis would be superficial, but in the way (which surely the author of the comment did not intend) that it would slight the much more interesting Nietzsche (incidentally, the superman is not a central feature of his philosophy in the eyes of most serious scholars, but a literary metaphor). More seriously, Rand’s system is in substance a mishmash of some Aristotle, Locke and some other modern empiricists, Kant (though she despised him, mostly due to her own superficial understanding [Nietzsche's critique of Kant was again much more interesting] her theory of rights is in fact straight out of Kant), a bit of common sense, and a large dollop of unsupported invective masquerading as argument.
December 8, 2009, 1:39 pmDonald Kilmer says:
You make my point for me. Stephen King, from your Wikipedia list, sold 300 Million Books total. But he produced 70 books. Do the math. That’s 4.3 million copies per book. Your figures cite 7 to 10 million for ONE book by Rand.
I doubt that White Christmas (a beautiful song, BTW) changed very many of those 50 million lives. The same goes for books by Stephen King, good writer that he is.
My point about creating a graph was to try and quantify the task of defining “influential.”
I concede that books sales alone are not good enough to do the job.
What also matters is the depth and breadth of the material that was sold. Atlas Shrugged is a pretty tough trek through some intellectually dense material. [Notwithstanding the fact that Rand could be redundant in her exposition.] Most of the other authors on your Wikipedia list write pure entertainment. (Danielle Steele, R.K. Rowling, etc…)
December 8, 2009, 1:47 pmDavid McCourt says:
Donald Kilmer’
It’s your vertical axis, not mine. I’m over there with personal opinion. But I would think it pretty evident that Irving Berlin, many of whose songs continue to be recorded today, is a far more influential figure in the history of American popular music and musical film and theater, than Ayn Rand has been — in whatever category you wish to place her.
As Jerome Kern, himself no slouch, said: “Irving Berlin has no place in American music – he is American music.”
December 8, 2009, 1:55 pmDonald Kilmer says:
Here is Rand’s take on Nietzsche:
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/nietzsche–friedrich.html
December 8, 2009, 1:55 pmDonald Kilmer says:
But music is a narrow category of influence. How did Irving Berlin change American culture? Music is usually a reflection, not a catylist for culture. What was it about about Berlin that influenced and/or changed American political ideas? American philosophy?
December 8, 2009, 2:00 pmTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Was Ayn Rand the Most Influential Russian Immigrant to the United States? -- Topsy.com says:
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December 8, 2009, 2:02 pmDJR says:
Another sterling example of understatement.
One sale of Atlas Shrugged does not necessarily equal one person “influenced” by it. I’m sure many have purchased it and been unable to finish it, perhaps passing it on to others who similarly failed to make it through the tome. I’m sure also that many who read all or most of it were not particularly influenced by its ideas, at least not in a positive way.
I understand from the last page of the copy I read that Rand published a newsletter for some period of time. Perhaps a better measure would be the highest subscription number for that publication, representing the people who were influenced significantly enough to seek out additional information on Rand’s ideas.
December 8, 2009, 2:07 pmDavid Bernstein says:
FWIW, most of the names mentioned, especially the older folks, wouldn’t have been considered “Russians” at all, but Jews who happened to live in the Russian Empire. This includes Ayn Rand–if her recent biography is correct, her family was acutely aware of being Jews–Rand herself went to the only elite private school in St. Petersburg that would take Jews (where she was friends with Nabakov’s sister!) And many of the individuals in question (not including Rand) never lived in “Russia,” but were from Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland, etc. in the Russian Empire.
December 8, 2009, 2:24 pmApu Nahasapasapeemipetilon says:
Eugene Volokh should be high on this list.
December 8, 2009, 2:47 pmbyomtov says:
FWIW, most of the names mentioned, especially the older folks, wouldn’t have been considered “Russians” at all, but Jews who happened to live in the Russian Empire.
Very true. Russian “mystic nationalism” clearly did not consider Jews to be Russians.
December 8, 2009, 3:02 pmTwirlip says:
Considered by who? The empire versus Russia proper point is on target though.
December 8, 2009, 3:04 pmTwirlip says:
Strong words, those. But this isn’t the thread to get into any serious discussion of Rand or Nietzsche. At a suitable time and place we can see which of us has the better knowledge of those writers.
My point was exactly what I said earlier. Rand is not regarded as a philosopher by other philosophers, as the creator of any “unique system”, but as somebody who infused the ideas of others into her work.
December 8, 2009, 3:13 pmDavid Bernstein says:
By themselves, or by the Russians. People like Rand who were actually born in Russia and had Russian as their native language are a closer case.
December 8, 2009, 3:20 pmTwirlip says:
As far as literary metaphor is concerned, you could say the same thing about many important features of Nietzsche, such as “eternal recurrence”.
As for importance, Kaufmann devotes a good deal of his analysis of Nietzsche to discussing it, far more so than a non-central feature of his philosophy would merit. The concept of the “Over-man”, which N. defined in the “across” sense rather than the “above” one, clearly played an important role in his thought, metaphor or not.
December 8, 2009, 3:27 pmTwirlip says:
Were not “Russian Jews” by definition born in Russia and Russian speakers? (Excluding here the “Russian Jews” were were actually Polish Jews in the Empire.)
December 8, 2009, 3:31 pmSnaphappy says:
I like the update: Ilya defines ‘influence’ as fundamentally changing someone’s world view–thereby omitting those who fundamentally changed the actual world rather than some people’s view of it. Also, let’s chuck out all technological innovation because someone else would have done it anyway. That last seems a positively anti-Randian view of things.
I’m guessing Ilya does not have much of a science background, which would explain how he can so easily discount Asimov’s influnce on many many individuals.
December 8, 2009, 3:44 pmbyomtov says:
I tend to attribute greater individual influence to those who fundamentally changed the world views of large numbers of people than to innovators in the arts or in technology (except in the rare cases where it can be shown that the technology in question would not have been developed in similar form within a few years anyway). In my view, great influence is a matter of unique impact, rather than contributions that were likely to be interchangeable with those of other similarly situated people.
You seem to be using a different standard for Rand than for artists or technologists or scientists. OK, her books are popular. But wouldn’t an awful lot of her fans have become libertarians anyway, even if she had never existed?
December 8, 2009, 4:02 pmDavid McCourt says:
I’m not sure the update is fair to science or technology: Edison becomes a nobody because others were also making incandescent bulbs of various kinds.
And I know the update isn’t fair to the arts in treating works of art as more or less fungible goods: Bach, schmach, somebody would have written some music if he hadn’t been around to do so. In fact, the update seems to express a strangely Marxist view of culture: all this stuff is just ephemeral superstructure that would have been created in more or less the same way, whether any particular person lived or not.
So the update prompts me to ask: what unique and lasting idea of significance that has fundamentally changed people’s view of the world did Ayn Rand create?
I’m not a libertarian, but a conservative with a respect for both the Whig and Tory strains in conservative politics, but I’d say Rand doesn’t compare with a writer and philosopher of real distinction, who was one generation removed from Russia: Robert Nozick.
December 8, 2009, 4:22 pmTwirlip says:
Somin seems to argue at times that Rand’s readership (25 million copies of her books sold) shows that she made the world a more libertarian place. Perhaps. Perhaps not. It may be that virtually all of the people who buy her books were already libertarian or libertarianish. It’s hard to argue that America has become a more libertarian place since Atlas was published.
(We can ignore for now the awkward fact that Rand loathed libertarians.)
December 8, 2009, 4:32 pmThales says:
“As far as literary metaphor is concerned, you could say the same thing about many important features of Nietzsche, such as “eternal recurrence”.
As for importance, Kaufmann devotes a good deal of his analysis of Nietzsche to discussing it, far more so than a non-central feature of his philosophy would merit. The concept of the “Over-man”, which N. defined in the “across” sense rather than the “above” one, clearly played an important role in his thought, metaphor or not.”
Kaufmann is generally considered a great literary translator but a poor scholar of Nietzsche’s philosophical ideas.
December 8, 2009, 4:36 pmDavid Bernstein says:
The question is not whether its appropriate to categorize them as “Russian Jews,” but whether it’s appropriate to characterize them as “Russians.” My grandfather was born in Belarus in 1903 or so, came here when he was five, and understood Russian at the time. But neither he nor his family would ever have said they were “Russian”, though if you asked him where his family came from, he’d say “Russia.”
December 8, 2009, 4:37 pmSeamus says:
I hadn’t realized that Hyman Rickover was born in the Russian Empire. He’s got to be right up there with Ayn Rand and Irving Berlin in the list of those who have had the greatest influence on our country. (Unless, that is, you think that nuclear warships sailing on the high seas have no influence on us landlubbers.)
December 8, 2009, 4:39 pmTwirlip says:
Reagrdless of what your grandfather may have thought, the rest of the world tends to think that people born in Russia and speaking Russian are, well, Russian.
But this brings up an obvious question. Do you consider yourself American? If so, why are you American while your grandfather was not Russian?
If not … well, we can get to that if it comes.
December 8, 2009, 4:51 pmTwirlip says:
I’m clearly not keeping up to date with recent developments. In my day, Kaufmann was considered to be the preemient Nietzsche scholar, along with Hollingdale. Who’s taken over that mantle now?
December 8, 2009, 4:54 pmvonneumann says:
How about Trotsky?
December 8, 2009, 4:58 pmDonald Kilmer says:
I wasn’t aware that there was a philosopher’s union that you have to join (and pay dues?) in order to be considered a philosopher.
And just how would Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aquanis, Hume, Locke, et al., have decided that Rand was “considered” a philosopher, when they live and died before she published any work for them to evaluate.
Or is your position that living, breathing (government funded?) academics are the only persons qualified to induct philosophers into the union?
December 8, 2009, 5:51 pmlgm says:
I don’t think Rand has been very influential. Yes she is well known. But her “philosophy”, such as it is, is that it’s OK to be a selfish jerk. This of course is very appealing to selfish jerks, but not to others. People who value their own welfare above all others’ identify with Galt. They can also fantasize about being superior to people who have broader concerns. Rand’s Atlas is unlikely to move those “broader concerns” people very far.
December 8, 2009, 8:00 pmDonald Kilmer says:
Rand may have admired Nietzsche’s projection of a stylized hero, just as it is possible to admire an artist’s technique yet reject the subject matter of his/her art. That doesn’t mean she accepted Nietzsche’s philosophy.
To lgm: Which of Rand’s heroes were “selfish jerks?”
December 8, 2009, 8:23 pmTwirlip says:
And I wasn’t aware that I’d suggested there was. Your skill at constructing strawmen is noted and I’ll take it into consideration if we ever have that big Rand/Nietzsche discussion.
December 8, 2009, 8:30 pmDonald Kilmer says:
You are dodging the question. What does a philosopher have to do to be considered a philosopher by other philosophers?
The title “philosopher” which we are debating the credentials for, is I think, “seeker of wisdom.”
Aren’t you and I (and all the bloggers here at VC) philosophers when we are engaged in discussions of: politics, art, ethics, knowledge, etc…?
December 8, 2009, 9:43 pmbyomtov says:
Reagrdless of what your grandfather may have thought, the rest of the world tends to think that people born in Russia and speaking Russian are, well, Russian.
Twirlip,
You miss the point rather badly. Maybe “the rest of the world” thinks that anyone born in Russia and speaking Russian is “Russian,” but the actual Russians of the time (and to some extent today) did not think that Jews meeting these standards were Russian. similarly, many Poles did not consider Jews living in Poland, speaking Polish, etc. to be “Poles.”
I made a passing comment about “mystic nationalism” earlier in this thread, but that’s precisely what was at work here. Jews did not adhere to Russian Orthodox (or, in Poland, Roman Catholic) beliefs, among other things. Their ancestors were neither peasants nor nobility. They were not considered part of the Russian community, but rather outsiders, perhaps “rootless cosmopolitans,” (though how impoverished shtetl dwellers could be considered “cosmopolitan” is a mystery).
It is perhaps difficult, from a 21st century American perspective, to appreciate the degree to which these differences mattered. But they did. Today no one doubts that a Jew living in New York or Washington is an American. But a century or more ago, a Jew in Moscow or St. Petersburg was not a Russian (and a Jew in Warsaw was not a Pole).
These are facts.
December 8, 2009, 9:44 pmDavid McCourt says:
byomtov,
Largely true, but there were some assimilated Jewish families in Russia (not nearly as many as in Germany — though that is a phrase whose terrible irony catches even in my Gentile throat), who lived outside the Pale of Settlement, e.g., Vladimir Horowitz’s family.
December 8, 2009, 10:19 pmDesiderius says:
Anatid’s initial comment is beautifully argued. Asimov even gets Time-man-of-the-year-style bonus points for his influence on Al-Qaeda.
Matt,
“A border-line case might be Isaiah Berlin. He was born in the Russian Empire (what would become Lithuania, if I remember correctly) and emigrated from St. Petersburg, but would not have been considered “Russian” by Russians (as he was Jewish) and I don’t know if he considered himself Russian at all, though of course he had an important and enduring interest in Russian intellectual history and thought. He was certainly more influential on academic thinking in the US and Brittan than Rand was, but certainly less so in the wider world and, I think, is unlikely to a very lasting impact, as his approaches to both politics and intellectual history have fallen from favor and his personal influence diminishes ever further.”
Not so fast (although Berlin, like Kościuszko, doesn’t really fit the criteria of the post). The greatest writers are often not fully appreciated during their own era or those that immediately follow. Berlin’s implicit epistemology leads one in some of the same directions Rand was headed (anti-totalitarianism, for one), with a remarkably more generous and mischievous spirit that characterizes the sort of writing that eventually becomes classic.
I don’t think we’ve heard the last of him…
December 8, 2009, 11:52 pmDavid McCourt says:
Desiderius,
Problem is, Isaiah Berlin cannot be the “most influential Russian immigrant to the U.S.” because . . . he did not emigrate to the U.S., but to England, where he lived almost his entire life.
December 9, 2009, 8:52 amDesiderius says:
And so he joins Kościuszko (illustrious company!) in not really fitting the criteria of this post, as you, too, note.
As for Berlin’s Russianness, see his essay on Akhmatova and Pasternak. It’s the Americanness (or lack thereof) that disqualifies him for this discussion.
December 9, 2009, 10:48 amGil Gilliam says:
Dang, based on the somewhat moving-target nature of responses, I now regret that I deleted my answer due to perceived non-conformance to the ask at hand.
My answer: Natalie Wood
December 9, 2009, 5:44 pmRandy says:
I nominate the Grand Duchess Anastasia. Or whoever she really was….
December 9, 2009, 6:16 pmHarry Binswanger says:
It’s great to see the list of names of people who have moved the world forward. A competition in honor of achievement is a welcome respite from sordid times.
On Rand’s depth and status as a philosopher, let’s go to the video tape. I.e., rather than making claims about who does and doesn’t regard her as a philosopher, let’s look at what she did.
My purpose is not to argue for these ideas, not even really to explain them in the limited space, but to indicate that she dealt in an original way with fundamental issues and at least claimed to have world-shaking new ideas on the most basic level.
In metaphysics, she basically re-affirmed Aristotle, adding two ideas: 1. “existence is identity”–i.e., a thing is (rather than has) its attributes. This is technical, and we can pass over it. 2. her concept of “the primacy of existence,” which is the recognition that existence exists and is what it is independently of consciousness (human, animal, or divine), and that (contra Descartes) consciousness can be known only after and on the basis of knowing existence. Her contribution here is in providing a neat formulation of ideas others (including Aristotle) held, but also in carrying through this premise, which she held to be axiomatic, to every aspect of the rest of her philosophy.
2. In epistemology, her defense of the infallibility of the senses, based largely on the distinction between form and object of perception (which is in Aquinas, as she herself noted), but only in passing (Summa Theologicae, I, Q. 85, 2.). Most importantly, her entirely original solution to “the problem of universals,” i.e., how we abstract to form concepts, based on her idea of similarity as measurement-relationships, and abstraction as “measurement-omission.” Her identification of the principle of “unit-economy,” and application of it throughout epistemology. Her unique attack on the “analytic-synthetic” dichotomy, on totally opposite grounds from Quine’s skepticism about that dichotomy, based on the premise that a concept’s meaning includes all the characteristics of its referents. In normative epistemology, her theory that “proof is reduction”–reduction back through the chain of abstractions to the perceptual level. Her view that logic essentially comes down to hierarchy and context (thereby cutting through the false dichotomy of Rationalism and Empiricism).
On the nature of man: 1. her theory of free will as a) entirely compatible with causality, properly understood, and b) as fundamentally the choice to focus one’s mind, activate the conceptual level of functioning, rather than to drift passively, mentally, or to deliberately suspend one’s reason and evade; 2. her theory of emotions as products of automatized evaluations (also mentioned in Aristotle and now becoming popular in cognitive psychology, but lacking the thoroughness with which she approached the topic of emotions).
In meta-ethics: ranking with her solution to the problem of universals is the solution she offered to the age-old “is-ought gap”: showing that “ought” is derived from “value,” which is derived inductively (not deductively) from the concept of “life” (through the concept of “alternative”). Her definition of “objective value” as a third alternative between “intrinsic value” and “subjective value” (part of a much wider development of three schools of thought in philosophic history: intrinsicism, subjectivism, and objectivism.)
In ethics: not just her new concept of egoism, based on her theory of what concepts are, what values are, and what free will is (as if that weren’t enough), but a presentation of a system of virtues: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, and pride. In social ethics: her principle that the prime social evil is the initiation of physical force.
In politics: her unprecedented argument as to why man has individual rights, what rights are in general, and what are the basic rights. Locke, of course, originated the concept of “rights” (though some give the honor to Grotius and/or Pufendorf), but none of them could give a rational, non-mystical validation of why men had rights. Her argument is that rights are moral principles required by man’s rational nature: the mind cannot function under force (as Soviet Russia amply demonstrated). “Rights are conditions of [social] existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival.” Plus her identification that only physical force can violate rights, thus providing a “bright-line” test for rights-violation. Her novel defense of the institution of government in terms of the need to place the use of force under objective control (something Nozick got from her, as he did most of the good parts of Anarchy, State, and Utopia).
I’ll skip her theories of esthetics (about which I’m writing a chapter for a forthcoming Blackwell’s-Wiley book on her).
Those are only a few headlines, and I grant you that some are not really intelligible in this form. But if you’re interested in content, my book The Ayn Rand Lexicon is free online (www.aynrandlexicon.com). It’s a mini-encyclopedia of Objectivism, an alphabetized compilation of her writings on over 400 topics in philosophy, psychology, and foreign affairs.
And, for a systematic, highly integrated exposition of Objectivism, read Leonard Peikoff’s Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.
December 19, 2009, 11:16 pmWatch Expendables Online says:
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