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Isaiah Berlin's response to the Soviet Union was central to his
identity, both personally & intellectually. Born in Riga in 1909, he spoke Russian as a child & witnessed both revolutions in St Petersburg in 1917, emigrating to the West in '21. He 1st returned to Russia in '45, when he met the writers Anna Akhmatova & Boris Pasternak. These formative encounters helped shape his later work, especially his defense of political freedom & his studies of pre-Soviet Russian thinkers. Never before collected, his writings about the USSR include his accounts of his famous meetings with Russian writers shortly after WWII; the celebrated '45 Foreign Office memorandum on the state of the arts under Stalin; his account of Stalin's manipulative `artificial dialectic'; portraits of Osip Mandelshtam & Boris Pasternak; his survey of Soviet culture written after a visit in '56; a postscript stimulated by the events of '89 etc. This collection includes essays that haven't been published, as well as some not widely known because they were published under pseudonyms to protect relatives living in Russia. The contents of this book were discussed at a seminar in Oxford in 2003, held under the auspices of the Brookings Institution. Berlin's editor, Henry Hardy, had prepared the essays for collective publication & here recounts their history. In his foreword, Brookings president Strobe Talbott relates the essays to Berlin's other work. The Soviet Mind will assume its rightful place among Berlin's works & will prove valuable for policymakers, students & those interested in Russian politics, past, present & future.
Isaiah Berlin taught for most of his life at Oxford University, where he was successively professor of social & political theory & founding president of Wolfson College. Thereafter he served as president of the British Academy. His other books include Karl Marx & Russian Thinkers.
Henry Hardy is a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford University. He's one of Berlin's literary trustees & has edited a number of other collections of his essays.
Strobe Talbott is president of the Brookings Institution &
previously served as US deputy secretary of state . He's author of several books on Russia & the USSR.