Volume 44, Number 20 · December 18, 1997
On Isaiah Berlin (1909 - 1997)
By Aileen Kelly, Alfred Brendel, Michael Ignatieff, Stuart Hampshire
He was born in the twilight of imperial Russia and he was buried on a grey Friday morning at the end of the century in the Jewish section of Oxford's Wolvercote cemetery. At the age of seven, he watched the banners of the Russian Revolution waving below the balcony of his parent's apartment in Petrograd; he lived long enough to witness the collapse of Soviet tyranny. The Russian Revolution framed both his life and work: as an intellectual historian he uncovered its totalitarian impulses, and as a political theorist he defended the liberal civilization it sought to destroy.
Feature, 3870 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |