Isaiah Berlin’s Russian Thinkers and the Argument for Inclusion

Abstract

Although there has been quite a bit of debate over Isaiah Berlin's life and legacy as a historian of ideas and political theorist, his Russian Thinkers is generally viewed as a classic in field of Russian intellectual history. (1) Even his detractors tend to pay tribute to its insight and importance. If Russian Thinkers is a classic, however, it is a largely overlooked one. (2) With increasing popularity of social history in 1960s and cultural history and imperial studies more recently, Berlin's history of ideas of great men in Russia's two capitals often appears outmoded and limited in scope. So, too, his relative inattention to scholarly apparatus and apparent lack of systematic research run against grain of intellectual history's increasing emphasis upon archival research. Moreover, Berlin's admiration for many 19th-century Russian thinkers undoubtedly sounds discordant among more familiar dispassionate tones that predominate in academic study. Why, then, look back to this largely overlooked classic? First, Russian Thinkers merits study precisely because of its stature and influence upon an entire generation of scholars. Through his series of essays on 19th-century Russian thinkers, Berlin had a crucial influence in shaping way Western (particularly Anglo-American) scholars understand Russian intelligentsia. Second, during highly politicized Cold War, his essays provided new insights and a new approach to study of Russian intelligentsia. As Aileen Kelly noted, rather than presenting Russian thinkers, and particularly members of Russian intelligentsia as products of political, social, or psychological pathology or extremism, on one hand, or as sterling, selfless representatives of Russia's national conscience, on Berlin emphasized diversity of views among Russian thinkers. (3) With perceptiveness and insight of a novelist, Berlin drew complex pictures of various Russian thinkers and their ideas, which, while capturing their overall world views and moral and intellectual motivations, did not fail to mention apparent inconsistencies which pulled them in opposing directions. Finally, Berlin anticipated some demands made by post-Cold War scholars of imperial today. For example, he did not present intelligenty as mere precursors of Bolsheviks or Soviet system. So too, not unlike contemporary quest among historians to relate to broader developments within rather than to relegate it to status of other, Berlin emphasized many ties and contributions of Russian thinkers to their counterparts. (4) Thus, in many ways, this classic still stands test of time, not only for its vibrancy and insight, but also because it managed to avoid many of pitfalls of Cold War scholarship on Russian intelligentsia. His was not a narrative of decline and fall of Russian Empire: that is to say, of its failure to become fully or Western. Instead, Berlin argued for inclusion of Russian thinkers into broad stream of intellectual history, proposing that they belonged to family of nations, and represented Western ideas, values, and aspirations. The problem with this argument, and indeed this general approach, is that it still retains a normative view of Europe and the West against which Russian intelligenty are measured and understood. Moreover, by emphasizing Europeanness of Russians and their capacity to adopt what he referred to as western values, ideas, and aspirations, he retained (and indeed buttressed) same Western triumphalism. Good Russia for Berlin was necessarily European and westernized. (5) This underlying assumption caused Berlin to overlook extent to which 19th-century Russian intelligenty sought to forge a path that was not necessarily opposed to but different from that of various nations. …