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FROM RUSSIA TO ROOSEVELT 13
princesses. She fi lled her diary with invective against the Communists,
further bolstered by her father’s position. Their new connection was
a source of great joy for Alisa, who remembered it was “only after we
began to be political allies that I really felt a real love for him. . . . ” She
also discovered that her father had an “enormous approval of my intelligence,”
which further confi rmed her emerging sense of self. 9
As in Petrograd, she remained unpopular with her classmates. They
were eager to ask for her help on school assignments, but Alisa was not
included in parties or invited on dates. Underneath their rejection Alisa
sensed a certain resentment. Did her classmates dislike her because she
was smarter? Were they penalizing her for her virtues? It was the fi rst
glimmer of an idea that would surface later, in her fi ction. “I think that
is what is the matter with my relationships,” she began to believe, but
worried this was “too easy” an explanation. 10
Most likely, her classmates simply found Alisa abrasive and argumentative.
She had an admitted tendency to force conversations, a violent
intensity to her beliefs, an unfortunate inability to stop herself from
arguing. But from her perspective, their jealousy had forced her into a
lonely exile. Alisa was starting to understand herself as a heroine unfairly
punished for what was best in her. Later she would come to see envy and
resentment as fundamental social and political problems.
Turning to her interior world, Alisa became concerned not only
with what she thought but how she thought. In her preteen years she
had taken her family’s casual attitude toward religion a step farther,
deciding that she was an atheist. Now she discovered the two corollaries
of her unbelief: logic and reason. When a teacher introduced
the class to Aristotle and syllogisms it was “as if a light bulb went off.”
Consistency was the principle that grabbed her attention, not surprising
given her unpredictable and frightening life. Consistency as Alisa
understood it was the road to truth, the means to prevail in the heated
arguments she loved, the one method to determine the validity of her
thoughts. 11
Three years after leaving Petrograd, in 1921, the Rosenbaums
returned. There was nowhere left to go, for Crimea and the rest of the
country had fallen to the Communists. Anna had begged Zinovy to
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