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Michael Ignatieff
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Isaiah Berlin: a life Paperback – January 1, 2000

by Michael Ignatieff (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 90 ratings
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Isaiah Berlin was witness to a century. Born in Riga in the twilight of the Czarist empire, he lived long enough to see the Soviet state collapse. Biographer of Marx, scholar of the Romantic movement, and defer of the liberal idea of freedom against Soviet tyranny, Berlin was the presiding judge of intellectual life on both sides of the Atlantic. When he died in 1997, he was hailed as the most important liberal philosopher of his time. But Berlin's life was not only a life of the mind. From Albert Einstein to Virginia Woolf, Winston Churchill to Anna Akhmatova, his circle of friends constitutes a veritable who's who of twentieth-century art, politics, and philosophy. In this definitive work, the result of a remarkable ten-year collaboration between biographer and subject, Michael Ignatieff charts the emergence of a unique temperament and a singular vision.
Previous page
  1. Print length
    356 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Vintage Uk
  4. Publication date
    January 1, 2000
  5. Dimensions
    5.08 x 0.91 x 7.8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0099577313
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0099577317
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage Uk; New Ed edition (January 1, 2000)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 356 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0099577313
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0099577317
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.08 x 0.91 x 7.8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 90 ratings

About the author

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Michael Ignatieff

Michael Ignatieff

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Writer, historian, professor and politician, Michael Ignatieff was born in Canada, educated at the University of Toronto and Harvard and now lives and works in Vienna, Austria where he is a professor of history at Central European University. He is married to Zsuzsanna Zsohar and has two children. He has written biography, reportage, history, philosophy and his books have been published in many languages. His recurrent themes are the fate of human rights and liberal values in a time of convulsive change. His novel--Scar Tissue-- was nominated for the Booker Prize and his defense of academic freedom and liberal principles earned him the Dan David Prize in 2019.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
90 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Clay Garner
5.0 out of 5 stars Ideas are "what human beings live for and by" - page 175
Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2016
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Ignatieff combines presentation of Berlin's personal life with his public life. He connects the internal struggle with his Jewish, Russian and English worlds, to his writing and speaking. Well done. Contents -

1. Albany
2. Riga
3. Petrograd
4. London
5. Oxford
6. All Souls
7. The Brethern
8. New York
9. Washington
10. Moscow
11. Leningrad
12. The Tribe
13. Cold War
14. Late Awakening
15. Fame
16. Liberal at Bay
17. Wolf son
18. Retrospect
19. Epilogue

Even though Berlin is now recognized as a public intellectual, Ignatieff presents his life the way Berlin lived it. His Jewish family in pre Soviet Russia, learning German from the merchants, running away from Lenin and the Bolsheviks, all play a key role in the man to come. His connection to the serious Russian writers, Tolstoy, Turgenev, etc., never leave him.

His Jewish tradition colors his connection to the gentile world, always preventing him from a feeling of acceptance. His English environment, which he loved, never completely smothered the Russian and Jewish influence. Produced a complex man and a facinating book.

A highlight is Berlin's visit to Soviet Russia just after the war. His experience with Boris Pasternak revealed the oppression, and compelling was Anna Akhmatova. She was the brightest star of the presoviet intelligencia. Spent all night talking and listening. Thunderstuck! The courage, the intensity, the integrity, the suffering, the endurance, affected him for the rest of his life. She wrote poetry about him that convinced any Russian reader that they were lovers (not true).

This experience, along with the suffering of others Russian writers, convinced Berlin of the basic evil of soviet communism. His academic life gradually focused on finding the cause of such evil.

More than that, he searched for the reason why the twentieth century became the worst in human history. How did the promise of the Enlightenment, with belief in universal human progress based on rational principles, bring forth Hitler, Stalin, etc.?

Visited with Pasternak who was tormented by (in his mind) compromising with the Soviets. Troubled by his being Jewish. Full of anguish and fear. . .

"Ten years later, Pasternak handed him a manuscript and said he would publish in the west whatever the consequences. Berlin went away, read the chapters and immediately knew that Pasternak's crisis of identity had been resolved. He had out all his equivocations behind him in a single act of defiance and genius: the writing of 'Zhivago' ". (147)

Suffering does not guarantee destruction of moral integrity. Maybe it can actually create it!

Another theme is Berlin's connection to Weizmann and Zionism. Jewish terrorists blew up British headquarters in Jerusalem, killing ninety one people.

"Weizmann struggled in vain to halt the the tide of Jewish terrorism. . . . Isaiah contributed a strong paragraph condemning Jewish terror: 'Terrorism insults our history; it mocks the ideals for which a Jewish society must stand; it contaminates our banner; it compromises our appeal to the worlds conscience." (177)

In 1949 Berlin at Mt Holyoke. "The root of communism lay in the eighteenth century belief - expressed in the most extreme form by Rousseau - that there is was one right way for humans to live. This belief denies that different ideals of life might not altogether be reconcilable with each other; Liberty, equality and fraternity, were beautiful but incompatible. Communism had inherited this faith and Stalin's engineers of human souls has sought to mould human beings into identical shapes. This same utopian temptation also threatened Western democracies, wherever planners believed that there must be an answer for all questions, and wherever experts conceived of society as one vast hospital and interpreted all human discontent as maladjustment." (192)

Wickedness does not exist, only sickness.

Probably Berlin's most striking insight was his analysis of Romanticism. Romanticism focused on the difference in humanity. Eventually "it is a denial of common humanity - a premise upon which all previous humanism, religious and secular, had stood." (248)

Hitler and Stalin rejected the "indivisibility of the human species. A communist true believer did not even attempt to persuade a bourgeois or aristocrat of the truth of communist principles: they were class enemies, to be re-educated or disposed of. Likewise, facists did not deign to reason with Jews, gypsies or other racial enemies. They were to be extirpated as vermin." (248)

Profound.

This work strikes a nice balance between personal feelings and intellectual ideas. Provides insight into the war and the following Cold War. Many famous men interacted with Berlin. Churchill, Burgess, Paternack, Elliott, etc., etc..

I enjoyed the clear explanation of his ideas on freedom and history.

Thirty one pages of notes, eight pages of black and white photographs and twenty five page index.

Written with a light touch, easy to absorb and enjoyable to learn.
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Igor Biryukov
5.0 out of 5 stars 'British spy' who loved Akhmatova
Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2003
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In this interesting book we learn that it was Stalin who called Mr. Berlin a 'British spy'. He did it after he had learned that Isaiah Berlin privately visited the exiled poet Anna Akhmatova during Berlin's visit to Leningrad in November 1945, against Soviet government's wishes. Incidentally, it turned out that Stalin was correct. Sir Isaiah Berlin was in fact a former British intelligence officer. At least, this you can find in the recently published Stephen Dorril's monumental volume called 'MI6 'Inside the covert world of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service'. Michael Ignatieff, who wrote this interesting book about Sir Isaiah Berlin, for whatever reason omitted this fact. Perhaps he didn't know about this side of Berlin's past, but more likely explanation would be his desire not to turn the book into a spy thriller, which is reasonable. I'd find it hard to believe, that Ignatieff was unaware of Berlin's ties to the British Intelligence, particularly in light of history of Ignatieff's own grandfather, beautifully described in Ignatieff's other book 'The Russian Album'. Berlin's life was long, interesting, and fortunate for a Russian born in 1909. After spending few years in Petrograd (where he witnessed and never forgot the 1917 Russian Revolution) his family was able to move with some difficulty to England, thanks to his father being a timber merchant with some connections and means. Ignatieff had been meeting with Berlin for ten years in London in order to write a biography, which, according to Berlin's condition couldn't be published while he was still alive. The book, apart from fascinating and packed with events life of Berlin, was interesting to me due to the fact that both Ignatieff and Berlin were closely linked to Russia, although at the different ends. Berlin - a Russian Jew from Riga, a fluent Russian speaker, steeped in middle class values, turned British Intelligence officer, later a renowned British philosopher, and a historian of ideas. Ignatieff is a descendent of high Russian aristocracy with links to the Tsars, who became a Harvard professor and a writer. I feel like he is almost redeeming the Ignatieff name in this book, since according 'Russian Album', his great-grandfather count Nicolas Ignatieff (Minister of Interior of Russia), was known for his anti-Semitism. It's interesting that Berlin's favorite writers were mostly Russian; particularly he admired Herzen and Tougrenev. He used to say that Herzen (who was also a Russian émigré living England in 19th century) influenced him most. Ignatieff's father had to go to exile (first to England and then Canada) after 1917 Russian revolution almost at the same age as Berlin. There was clearly a deep, almost farther-son connection, uniting these too men and I suspect their meeting was not accidental. Although Berlin thought all his life about idea of liberty (Two concepts of Liberty), he wasn't a liberal in the American contemporary meaning of the word. He has first formulated the simple but wonderful idea of value pluralism and put it ahead of the democracy, which he said could be intolerant and oppressive. He was a true free thinker, who refused to subscribe to any ideology. In short, Berlin was of his own class. Unique thing about him was, although he was a British subject, he combined a trinity of identities ' i.e. British, Jewish, and Russian and managed to tap from them his creativity, intelligence, and insight. This is a well-written and insightful book. I recommend it for anyone interested in Belin's life, history of ideas, and modern Russian history.
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Kelsy Jean White
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2014
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Berlin is portrayed by Ignatieff as sympathetic, likeable, and brilliant. Biographies always place their subjects in context and this is a great book to do so. Not to be missed by those who are just starting to read Berlin.
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reading man
4.0 out of 5 stars Read This At The Reported Tempo of Berlin's Conversation
Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2014
This isn't a bad bio, but I was tempted from the start to speed-read and skip. I think this is because Berlin, for all his brilliance, was more famous as a conversationalist than a writer. In fact, says Ignatieff, he disliked writing and always dictated his essays.

His first full-length book, a biography of Karl Marx, was written after the project had been turned down by the Coles and Laski, and omits any serious consideration of Marx's economics, because Berlin admits he hadn't mastered CAPITAL sufficiently to write about it.

I've always found a certain questionable simplicity in his very readable essays. For example, does he really add anything to our knowledge of De Maistre? And his whole-scale rejection of Hannah Arendt is dubious: you may not agree with THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM, but it's a formidable book not the nonsense that Berlin calls it.

His short book about Tolstoy is very good, but I don't think he really adds anything to our knowledge of Turgenev, supposedly his favorite Russian novelist.

He may have been a genius to his students and friends, but I fail to see that quality in his writings and Ignatieff's bio, while well worth reading, doesn't explain what makes Berlin an iimportant figure. He was a learned don, and so were hundreds of others who wrote even better essays and full-length books.
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marianne s
5.0 out of 5 stars Very glad to have this bio
Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2017
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I am a long-time fan of Isaih Berlin's writing. Very glad to have this bio. Thanks!
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MELVIN
5.0 out of 5 stars Superb and inspirational
Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2014
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Teaches us about history and gifted individual . Berlin's life is an inspired example of what one can accomliish even under adversity .
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Alan Ryan
5.0 out of 5 stars Nicely written life of a fascinating figure
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 6, 2023
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Ignatieff was Berlin’s choice for a biographer, so you’d not expect a particularly critical account of its subject’s career. What you get instead is a much more intimate picture of Berlin than in most of the usual accounts, whether favourable or the reverse. The book is especially good on Berlin’s earlier years, his childhood in Riga and Petrograd, his schoolboy career at prep school and St Paul’s, and his dazzling career as an Oxford undergraduate. It no doubt helps that Ignatieff’s father was ar school with Berlin and friends with him at NewCollege, and that Ignatieff is so conscious of his family’s Russianness. It all makes for an engrossing read.
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Alain ch
3.0 out of 5 stars Un ouvrage rare et passionnant
Reviewed in France on July 28, 2021
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Arrive avec retard postal, mais tres bien
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Antonio
5.0 out of 5 stars A luminous book
Reviewed in Australia on April 29, 2020
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A delicious book of knowledge, history and gossips endowed with clarity. A must to read prior to embark in the journey of Isaiah Berlin.
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Kelvin Kaufman
5.0 out of 5 stars humane, erudite and eloquent
Reviewed in Canada on May 6, 2014
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We'll done bio and excursus on liberalism, liberty, morality and civilized debate; current Israeli politicians should review his plea for a two-state solution and all social democrats should consider Berlin's arguments on pluralism.
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Geoff Crocker
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, packed with interest, but inconclusive
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 16, 2022
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Michael Ignatieff’s ‘Isaiah Berlin’ is deeply interesting, both about Berlin, but more so about the social context and networks in which he lived. We get meetings with Akhmatova and Pasternak, Kennedy and Keynes, Churchill, Thatcher, Burgess and MacLean. Since most of the material was obtained from Ignatieff’s long interviews with Berlin, it’s not clear how far the work is auto-biographical, or results from independent research. Berlin found privileged entry to all elite circles and developed a public persona from his essays and radio broadcasts. He provided an intellectual challenge to socialist and communist politics. He was chosen to found what became Wolfson College at Oxford.

An evaluation of his contribution remains uncertain. Was he, as Clarissa Eden claimed, ‘a salon conversationalist’ (p172), knighted as Patricia Douglas jibed for ‘his services to conversation’ (p222)? His interest in Romanticism challenged Enlightenment logic, but was never fully expounded. His analysis of the trade-off between virtues, and therefore their lack of objectivity, offered insight. He was certainly distinguished as an essayist, but thrived on privileged access, rather than on a singular depth of contribution.
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