This month Crazy Woman Cellars celebrates the fierce author, philosopher and intellect Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand was her pen name, as she was born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum on February 2, 1905 in communist Russia. She was 12 years old during the October Revolution in Russia, which destroyed her family life as she knew it. Her father’s business, like most businesses, was seized by the government. Her family fled to Crimea, and she learned to despise the ideals of communism. She was a superb student, and decided she would become a writer by the time she was 9 years old. Despite her family’s desperate living conditions, including near starvation, she graduated from Leningrad State University in October 1924 with a major in history and a minor in philosophy.