The time is the Russian Revolution. The place is a country
burdened with fear - the midnight knock at the door, the
bread hidden against famine, the haunted eyes of the
fleeing, the grublike fat of the appeasers and oppressors.
In a bitter struggle of the individual against the
collective, three people stand forth with the mark of the
unconquered in their bearing: Kira, who wants to be a
builder, and the two men who love her - Leo, an aristocrat,
and Andrei, a Communist. In their tensely dramatic story,
Ayn Rand shows what the theories of Communism mean in
practice. We the Living is not a story of politics but of
the men and women who have to struggle for existence behind
the Red banners and slogans. It is a picture of what
dictatorship - of any kind - does to human beings, what kind
of men are able to survive, and which of them remain as the
ultimate winners. What happens to the defiant ones? What
happens to those who succumb? Who are the winners in this
conflict? Against a vivid panorama of political revolution
and personal revolt, Ayn Rand offers an answer that
challenges the modern conscience.