Isaiah Berlin witnessed the excesses of the Russian Revolution as a child, and i
n becoming one of the key liberal intellects of the last century some of his mos
t important contributions were on the subject of Russia and the concept of freed
om. In the ten essays gathered here, Berlin addresses the great Russian minds of
the nineteenth century: Herzen, Bakunin, Turgenev, Belinsky and Tolstoy, as wel
l as exploring the political and social revolutions they inspired and responded
to. Berlin himself describes this extraordinary outpouring as 'the largest singl
e Russian contribution to social change in the world'.
