Russian Thinkers (Penguin Classics) Book

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.'

Presenting ten essays the author addresses the Russian minds of the nineteenth century: Herzen Bakunin Turgenev Belinsky and Tolstoy as well as exploring the political and social revolutions they inspired and responded to. He describes this as 'the largest single Russian contribution to social change in the world'.

'There exists a great chasm between those who relate everything to a single central vision and those who pursue many ends' Isaiah Berlin witnessed the excesses of the Russian Revolution as a child.