Don and diplomat: Isaiah Berlin and Britain's early Cold War

Abstract

Many academics were involved in government in Britain during and immediately after the Second World War. This created a powerful epistemic community among decision-makers and academic elites which helped to shape the Atlanticist bias in politics and in the cultural Cold War from the 1940s. Sir Isaiah Berlin, (1909 − 1997) was employed as a British civil servant in the US and then the USSR, for five years to 1946. He then became an influential scholar, writer, public intellectual, and academic entrepreneur. His practical experiences in government informed and reinforced his support for Atlanticism, and revealed his ambiguity about British initiatives for postwar West European unity. This article contributes to our understanding about the dominance of the Anglo-American cultural relationship in the Cold War, and also throws more light on the relationship between individual academics and policy-makers.