The struggle of Equality 7-2521 to think, live, and love on his own terms and in conflict with the oppressive dictatorship forms the heart of Anthem. By means of her character's quest, Ayn Rand defends the right of individuals to a life of their own and sounds a warning against modern society's relentless movement toward collectivism. The novella is informed with a sense of urgency derived from the popularity of various collectivist factions existing at the time of its writing (that continue to exist to this day.) In the 1930s, a number of U.S. intellectuals and politicians praised both the Nazi and Communist systems as "noble experiments" — and support for Communism, as Marxist ideology, continues among many American intellectuals.
Ayn Rand was born in Russia in 1905 and raised during the Russian Revolution. She saw firsthand the horrors of Communism in action. She witnessed the confiscation of private property, the persecution (and disappearance) of political dissidents, and through reports from her family that remained in Russia, the extermination of millions by Josef Stalin. Escaping to America — the freest country in history — she was horrified to find present and increasingly popular the very ideas she had fled. Leading up to World War II, American intellectuals and politicians often lauded the Fascist, Nazi, and Communist regimes in Italy, Germany, and Russia as "noble experiments."
Many American leaders admired the Fascists and Communists for their undeviating commitment to the belief that an individual exists solely to serve society. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, though certainly not an advocate of totalitarianism, implemented, in the New Deal, a myriad of programs that were loosely based on the premise that moral virtue resides exclusively in selfless service to others. Before the war, moral support existed in the United States for both the Communists and the Nazis; even after the war, support for Communism persisted among the intellectuals, as it does to this day. Ayn Rand wrote Anthem in the 1930s as a warning to Western civilization about the horrors of collectivism, whether of the Nazi or Communist variety.
