We philosophers have a way of mulling over the same ideas over and over again, wearing down to the bare truth we seek, the idea at the core that needs to be expressed multiply before it can be realized.
Kira will be an engineer, just as Talley was an engineer, just as Rearden was an engineer, just as Roark is an engineer. Rand's protagonists are people who want truth, who seek it in the absolute. When asked why she chooses a life of "dirt, and iron, and rust, and blowtorches, and filthy, sweaty men and no feminine company" Kira responds, "It's the only profession...for which I don't have to learn any lies. Steel is steel. Most of the other sciences are someone's guess, and someone's wish, and many people's lies."
Vasili Ivanovitch is a man ravanged by communism, a man whose powerful body is stooped by the weight of the collective. This is an early reflection of Rearden, of Wynand, at the end of their runs for truth and justice embodied in Rand's capitalism.
Rand is pressing here at the same truths she presses at in the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Not the same story, but a story seeking after the same end.
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