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Synopsis

‘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’.

This new edition, specially prepared for Penguin Classics, has been completely reset with an expanded index and new editorial apparatus, including a glossary of names. Aileen Kelly’s introduction shows how Berlin, in combining the pragmatism of English liberalism and the aspirations of European idealism, revealed that it is through men’s moral ideals that they may become free of tyranny.

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Critic Review:

"Isaiah Berlin is an author without whom I could not have written these plays."
-Tom Stoppard, in The Coast of Utopia program

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