Isaiah Berlin - Russian Thinkers

PENGUIN BOOKS

RUSSIAN THINKERS

Sir Isaiah Berlin OM is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. In the course

of his academic career he has been President of the British Academy, Professor

of Social and Political Theory at the University of Oxford and the first

President of Wolfson College, Oxford. He is an Honorary Fellow of four

Oxford Colleges, and has received Honorary Doctorates from a number of

universities around the world. His work covers a wide variety of subjects and

apart from his work in the fields of philosophy and political studies he

has made some notable contributions to Russian studies; some of his most

acclaimed essays are to be found in this volume. His superb translations of

Turgenev's First Love and A Month in the Country are both published in

Penguin Classics. Among his many other publications are Karl Marx (1939),

The Age of Enlightenment (1956), Four Essays on Liberty (1969), Vico and Herder

(1976), Against the Current (1979), Personal Impressions (1980), The Crooked

Timber of Humanity (1990), The Magus of the Nonh (1993), on). G. Hamann,

and The Sense of Reality (1996). His latest book is The Proper Study of Mankind

(1997), an anthology of essays drawn from previous volumes. Russian Thinkers

was first published as a collection in 1978.

In 1977 Sir Isaiah received the Jerusalem Prize for his defence of human

liberty. He has also been awarded the Erasmus Prize (1983) for his contribution to European culture, and the Agnelli Prize (1987) for his writings on the ethical aspects of modem industrial societies.

Henry Hardy, in addition to co-editing this volume, has edited seven other

books by Isaiah Berlin: Concepts and Categories, Against the Current, Personal

Impressions, The Crooked Timber of Humanity, The Magus of the Nonh, The Sense

of Reality and The Proper Study of Mankind (co-edited with Roger Hausheer).

From 1985 to 1990 he was Senior Editor, Political and Social Studies, at

Oxford University Press. He is now a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford,

where he is working on a collection of Isaiah Berlin's letters.

Aileen Kelly, introducer and co-editor of this volume, received her D.Phil. in

Russian Studies from Oxford and is now a Lecturer in Slavonic Studies at

Cambridge University and a Fellow of King's College. She is the author of

Mikhail Bakunin: A Study in the Prychology and Politics of Utopianism, and is

currendy working on a study of Alexander Herzen.

ISAIAH BERLIN

'R!!Jsian Thinkers

Edited by

Henry Hardy and Aileen Kelly

With an Introduction by

Aileen Kelly

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

First published in Great Britain by The Hogarth Press Ltd I 978

First published in the United States of America by

The Viking Press I97B

Published in Pelican Books I979

Reprinted in Penguin Books I 994

3 5 7 9 IO 8 6 4

Copyright 1948, 1951, 1953 by Isaiah Berlin

Copyright© Isaiah Berlin, 1955. 1956, 1960, 1961, 1972, 1978

'Herzen and Bakunin on Individual Liberty' copyright©

President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1955

This selection and editorial matter copyright ©

Henry Hardy, 1978

Introduction copyright© Aileen Kelly, 1978

All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Berlin, Isaiah, Sir.

Russian thinkers.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Russia-lntellectual life---18o1-1917-

Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Intellectuals-­

Russia-Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Hardy,

Henry. II. Kelly, Aileen. Ill. Title.

(DK189.2.B47 1979)

947' .07

78-2082.3

ISBN o 14 oz.zz6o x

Printed in England by Clays Ltd,

St lves pic

Set in Caslon

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject

to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,

re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the

publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than

that in which it is published and without a similar condition

including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

Contents

Autlwr' s Prifau

pagt vii

Editorial Prtfau

IX

Introduction: A Complex Vision by Ailttn Ktl/y

xiii

Russia and I 848

The Hedgehog and the Fox

22

Herun and Bakunin on Individual Liberty

82

A Remarkable Decade

I The Birth of the Russian Intelligentsia

1 1 4

II German Romanticism in Petersburg

and Moscow

IJ6

I II Vissarion Belinsky

I 50

IV Alexander Herun

1 86

Russian Populism

2 1 0

Tolstoy and Enlightenment

2J8

Fathers and Children

261

lndt11

J06

v

Author's Preface

The essays collected in this volume, the first of four, were written, or

delivered as lectures, on various occasions over almost thirty years, and

therefore possess less unity of theme than if they had been conceived

in relation to one another. I am naturally most grateful to the editor

of these collected papers, Dr Henry Hardy, for his conviction that

they are worth exhuming, and for the meticulous and unremitting

care with which he has seen to it that some of their blemishes, in

particular inaccuracies, inconsistencies and obscurities, have been, so far

as possible, eliminated. Naturally, I continue to be solely responsible

for the shortcomings that remain.

I owe a great debt also to Dr Aileen Kelly for furnishing this

volume with an introduction: in particular, for her deep and sympathetic understanding of the issues discussed and of my treatment of them. I am also most grateful to her for the great trouble to which,

in the midst of her own work, she has gone in checking and, on

occasion, emending, vague references and excessively free translations.

Her steady advocacy has almost persuaded me that the preparation of

this volume may have been worthy of so much intelligent and devoted

labour. I can only hope that the result will prove to have justified the

expenditure of her own and Dr Hardy's time and energy.

A number of these essays began life as lectures for general audiences,

not read from a prepared text. The published versions were based on

transcripts of the spoken words, as well as the notes for them, and, as I

am well aware, they bear the marks of their origin in both their style

and their structure.

The original texts remain substantially unaltered: no attempt has

been made to revise them in the light of anything published subsequently on the history of Russian ideas in the nineteenth c:entury, since nothing, so far as I know, has appeared in this (somewhat

sparsely cultivated) field to cast serious doubt on the central theses of

these essays. I may, however, be mistaken about this; if so, I should

like to assure the reader that this is due to ignorance on my pan rather

than unshakeable confidence in the validity of my own opinions.

VII

RUSSIAN THINKERS

Indeed, the entire burden of these collected essays, so far as they can

be said to display any single tendency, is distrust of all claims to the

possession of incorrigible knowledge about issues of fact or principle

in any sphere of human behaviour.

ISAIAH BERLIN

July I977

viii

Editorial Preface

This is one of five volumes in which I have brought together, and

prepared for reissue, most of the published essays by Isaiah Berlin

which had not hitherto been made available in a collected form.1 His

many writings were scattered, often in obscure places, most were out

of print, and only half a dozen essays had previously been collected

and reissued.2 These five volumes, together with the list of his

publications which one of them (Against the Current) contains, 3 and a

new volume on j. G. Hamann, 4 have made much more of his work

readily accessible than before.

The present volume comprises ten essays on nineteenth-century

Russian literature and thought. The details of their original publication are as follows. 'Russia and I 848' appeared in the Slavonic Review 26 (I948); The Hedgehog and the Fox' first appeared, in a shorter

form, as 'Lev Tolstoy's Historical Scepticism' in Oxford Slavonic

Papers 2 (I95I), and was reprinted with additions under its present

title in I953 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in London, and by Simon

and Schuster in New York; 'Herzen and Bakunin on Individual

Liberty' was published in Ernest j. Simmons (ed.), Continuity and

Change in Russian and Soviet Thought (Cambridge, Massachusetts,

I 9 55: Harvard University Press); the four esays collectively entitled

I This volume was first published in London and New York in 1978. The

other volumes are Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays (London, 197 8;

New York, 1979), Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas (London,

1979; New York, 1980), Persona/Impressions (London, 1980; New York,

198 1) and The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas

(London, 1990; New York, 1991).

z Four Essays on Liberty (London, 1969; New York, 1970) and Vico atld

Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas (London and New York, 1976).

Other collections have appeared only in translation.

3 Its currently most up-to-date version appears in the 1991 impression of

the Oxford University Press paperback edition.

4 The Magus of the North: J. G. Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism, edited by Henry Hardy (London, 1993; New York, 1994).

R USS IA N T H I NKERS

'A Remarkable Decade', reprinted here from the version published

as 'A Marvellous Decade' in Encounter 4 No 6 (June I955), 5 No I 1

(November 1955), 5 No 12 (December 1955) and 6 No 5 (May 1956),

originated as the Northcliffe Lectures for 19 54 (delivered at U niversity College, London), which were also broadcast later that year on the Third Programme of the BBC; 'Russian Populism' is the

introduction to Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution (London, 1960:

Weidenfeld and Nicolson; New York, 1960: Knopf), and also

appeared in Encounter 15 No 1 (July 1960); 'Tolstoy and Enlightenment', the P.E.N. Hermon Ould Memorial Lecture for I960, was published first in Encounter I 6 No 2 (February 1961 ), and subsequently in Mightier Than The Sword (London, 1964: Macmillan);