Russian Thinkers / Isaiah Berlin

‘There exists a great chasm between those who relate everything to a single central vision and those who pursue many ends’ Isaiah Berlin witnessed the excesses of the Russian Revolution as a child. In becoming one of the key liberal intellects of the last century he made some of his most important contributions on Russian thought and the idea of freedom. In the ten essays gathered here, Berlin addresses the great Russian minds of the nineteenth century – Herzen, Bakunin, Belinsky, Tolstoy and Turgenev – as well as exploring the political and social revolutions they inspired and responded to. Berlin himself describes this extraordinary outpouring of ideas as ‘the largest single Russian contribution to social change in the world’.