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
Published by the Penguin Group
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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