MARINA DEL REY, CA -- Eleanora "Nora" Drobyshev, Ayn Rand's youngest sister and the last of her immediate family, died on March 15, 1999, in St. Petersburg, Russia. She was 89.
     Researchers from the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) were in contact with Mrs. Drobyshev for a number of years, speaking to her last on March 8 and, recently, with the heirs of her estate.
     During Ayn Rand's early years in Russia, Mrs. Drobyshev was her favorite relative, sharing a passion for the movies, the West, and the sense of life they represented. After she immigrated to the United States in 1926, Miss Rand stayed in frequent contact with her family, including Nora, exchanging more than 1,200 letters, and waging a tireless campaign until 1937 to bring her family to America. The correspondence ended abruptly in early 1937, when Miss Rand saw a post office notice warning Americans that letters to Russia would put recipients at risk because of the Stalinist terror.
     After World War II, Ayn Rand gained news, through third parties, of her family, including the fact that her parents had died. In 1973, after a 35-year silence, Ayn Rand received a letter from Mrs. Drobyshev. After a short correspondence, Miss Rand invited Mrs. Drobyshev and her husband to America.
     They soon arrived but Mrs. Drobyshev's outlook on life had totally changed from what it had been in her youth. She rejected America and chose voluntarily to return to the U.S.S.R -- to Miss Rand's lasting disappointment.
     In 1995, ARI hired Russian researchers who contacted Mrs. Drobyshev in St. Petersburg and interviewed her. In three later interviews arranged by ARI oral historian Scott McConnell, Mrs. Drobyshev was able to answer many questions about Ayn Rand's early life, and those answers are now part of the Ayn Rand Archives.
     Mrs. Drobyshev destroyed all of her own personal papers prior to her death. A family member in Russia who knows nothing of Ayn Rand has inherited Mrs. Drobyshev's estate.