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essay, Branden tells us that Lossky gave Alissa a “Perfect” grade, out of three possibilities: Perfect, Passing, or Failure. She adds that Lossky believed that female students “had no business in philosophy.” She also spells Lossky’s name correctly.⁴⁸ None of these distinctions alters the essential intellectual chutzpa that Rand exhibited in her final examination session with the famed professor.

      The authenticity of Rand’s reminiscences has been challenged in some respects by at least four scholars, three of whom are relatives of Lossky. Boris and Andrew, Lossky’s surviving sons, and Nicholas, his grandson, have all objected to the characterization of N. O. Lossky as contemptuous of female philosophy students. They point out that their family has had a history of strong women, including Maria Stoiunina, who established the famous gymnasium for girls and young ladies, attended by Alissa Rosenbaum, and in which Lossky actually taught. One of Lossky’s female students during the Russian period of his life, Natalie Duddington, became a lifelong friend and the English translator of his important works. Andrew recollects that his father demanded a basic competence in the subject matter of his courses from both men and women, making no distinctions between them. His examinations were forthright, neither tricky nor especially difficult. The distinguished philosopher George Kline was a regular auditor of two of Lossky’s courses at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. He too vouches for the professor’s fairness and nonsexist attitudes. Kline enjoyed a friendly correspondence with Lossky and recalls that the professor “always treated his students with respect and kindness.” Lossky’s contempt was reserved only for dogmatic, simplistic, Marxist-Leninists who attacked speculative and idealist thought.⁴⁹

      As an expert in the history of Russian philosophy, Kline has also taken issue with the characterization of Lossky as a scholar of Plato. Lossky knew his Greek philosophy well and would have been more than qualified to teach a course on the ancients. But as a specialist in German philosophy from Kant to Husserl, N. O. Lossky published nearly three hundred works, and not one of them even mentions Plato in the title.

      Some of the interpretive differences regarding Lossky’s attitudes toward female philosophy students can be attributed to subjective factors. The evidence indicates that Lossky was not unfair to his women students. However, it is impossible to grasp the mental strain under which Lossky lived in the 1921–22 academic year. This may very well have affected his demeanor and otherwise affable personality. Certainly it cannot be discounted that to a sixteen-year-old student, any professor in a bad mood could be the source of great personal consternation. It is also quite possible that as a fiction writer, Rand has merely embellished the story by intensifying the conflict between its major characters.⁵⁰

      But there is a greater problem of historical authenticity that requires some elucidation.

      In 1920–21, Lossky was at the top of his profession. He had already published a number of significant philosophical treatises, and continued to lecture at the university, and at the Stoiunin Gymnasium. He succeeded in earning a few extra black bread rations by teaching an “Introduction to Philosophy” course in the National University, a school of adult education, in the Shlissel’burg district of Petrograd.⁵¹ He gave lectures on the subject of God in the system of organic philosophy to the Free Philosophical Association.

      Lossky’s courses at the university were in the grand intuitivist tradition of philosophy he spearheaded. In 1916, he taught on Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel and on Leibniz. In 1917, he offered classes on the theory of judgments, and an introduction to philosophy. In 1918–19, he lectured on the problems of free will, the problem of the trans-subjectivity of sensory qualities, logic, contemporary epistemology, and an introduction to metaphysics. In 1919–20, Lossky again offered his course on Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, followed in 1920–21 by a seminar on materialism, hylozoism, and vitalism from an antimaterialist perspective.⁵² None of his listed university courses dealt specifically with Plato, Aristotle, or the ancient philosophers.

      More important, something happened in the summer of 1921 that would alter Lossky’s life forever, ending his illustrious career at the university and ultimately leading to his exile from the Soviet Union. In Moscow, a meeting of the State Scientific Council was called to discuss the future of university professors. The regime was becoming increasingly suspicious of those non-Marxist professors and intellectuals who had continued to oppose the Revolution. M. N. Pokrovsky chaired the meeting. The Council removed many of Petrograd’s privatdocents. Professor Lapshin was also barred from teaching. Only Aleksandr Vvedensky was allowed to remain.

      When the Council addressed the issue of the celebrated Lossky’s presence at the university, they were compelled to censure him for his defense of the Trinity. But it was brought to the attention of Pokrovsky that Lossky, to his credit, had once been expelled from the Vitebsk Gymnasium for his propagandistic views in favor of atheism and socialism. The Council decided to remove him from his Petrograd teaching position, but allow him to serve in the Institute of Scientific Research, an annex to the university. Consequently, in 1921, Lossky—officially—taught no university courses.

      Pitirim Sorokin, another of the ousted professors, knew that the autonomy of the university was being destroyed. Elected deans were replaced by Communists, and a Red student was given a special commissary position over the rector of the university. He observes that the research the barred professors conducted at the Historical and Sociological Institutes, kept them away from teaching responsibilities “where they would not be harmful to students” ([1924] 1950, 247, 284). With many Petrograd positions vacated, students were subjected to the amateur scholarship of newly appointed Bolshevik professors. One such professor, Borichevsky, taught a course in logic which competed with Vvedensky’s. Borichevsky’s expertise was limited to Spinoza, Epicurus, and materialism. His embarrassing mistakes in the presentation of Plato’s philosophy were the subject of the students’ ridicule. Sorokin adds that those professors who were barred from teaching were also barred from organizing special alternative courses.

      When Lossky learned of his dismissal from the university, he was devastated. Around the middle of August 1921, he came down with a gallstone illness. The doctors prescribed bed rest, and between September and December, Lossky spent most of his time in convalescence. Around the Christmas holidays, his health began to improve. Undeterred by threats from the Bolsheviks or heckling by Komsomoltsy in the audience, Lossky joined Sorokin, Grevs, Karsavin, and others in public forums that praised Christianity and the Kingdom of God.

      But in January 1922, Lossky experienced a relapse in his illness. He lost weight, developed jaundice, and was on the verge of having gallbladder surgery. In March, on the day of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, Lossky went with his wife to donate some of their valuables to the Church. From the moment of their sacrifice, Lossky (1969) writes, his jaundice and his illness were cured (215–16).

      The Bolshevik leadership was becoming more fearful of the continued strength exhibited by prerevolutionary scientists, writers, and other public figures. On 16 August 1922, Lossky was summoned to the offices of the Cheka. He thought it was in response to a passport inquiry he had made to travel to Czechoslovakia. Instead, he was arrested, along with other Petrograd scholars, including Lapshin and Karsavin. Under forced interrogation, Lossky was compelled to agree that he had been involved in counterrevolutionary activities that were punishable by death. Under Bolshevik reprieve, partly due to Trotsky’s intervention, the sentenced intellectuals were released on the condition that they would leave the country at once. They could travel with small amounts of linen and clothing and were instructed to leave their books behind. By 15 November 1922, Lossky, his wife, three sons, and his mother-in-law, Maria Nikolaievna Stoiunina, boarded a German steamer. Stopping in Berlin, the Losskys applied for and received visas allowing them into Czechoslovakia on 13 December 1922.

      So, the question is, How could Lossky have taught Rand if he was barred from teaching at the university, and if he was intermittently sick throughout the period, only to be exiled by the end of 1922? Could it be that the relationship between Lossky and Alissa Rosenbaum was a product of Rand’s imagination?⁵³

      An assessment of all the available evidence in this perplexing case is not as damning to the integrity of Rand’s recollections as might appear at first glance. There are two basic possibilities: (1) Rand mistook, hallucinated, or lied about

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