Synopses & Reviews
Required reading for fans of Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopiathe landmark investigation into Russian history and thought Few, if any, English-language critics have written as perceptively as Isaiah Berlin about Russian thought and culture. Russian Thinkers is his unique meditation on the impact that Russia's outstanding writers and philosophers had on its culture. In addition to Tolstoy's philosophy of history, which he addresses in his most famous essay, "The Hedgehog and the Fox," Berlin considers the social and political circumstances that produced such men as Herzen, Bakunin, Turgenev, Belinsky, and others of the Russian intelligentsia, who made up, as Berlin describes, "the largest single Russian contribution to social change in the world."
Review
"These essays...illuminate dazzingly both the Russian mind and the role of ideas in history." Arthur Schlesinger
Synopsis
As one of the most outstanding liberal intellects of this century, the author brings to his portraits of Russian thinkers and his subject range is as diverse as may be expected a unique perception of the social and political circumstances that produced men such as Herzen, Bakunin, Turgenev, Belinski and Tolstoy.
About the Author
Isaiah Berlin was a Fellow of All Souls and New College, Professor of Social and Political Theory, and founding President of Wolfson College. He also held the Presidency of the British Academy. He died in 1997.
Henry Hardy is a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, and is one of Isaiah Berlin's Literary Trustees. He has edited several other books by Berlin, and is currently preparing his letters and his remaining unpublished writings for publication.