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Isaiah Berlin: in CONVERSATION with STEVEN LUKES Author(S): ISAIAH BERLIN and Steven Lukes Reviewed Work(S): Source: Salmagundi, No

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Isaiah Berlin: in CONVERSATION with STEVEN LUKES Author(S): ISAIAH BERLIN and Steven Lukes Reviewed Work(S): Source: Salmagundi, No Skidmore College Isaiah Berlin: IN CONVERSATION WITH STEVEN LUKES Author(s): ISAIAH BERLIN and Steven Lukes Reviewed work(s): Source: Salmagundi, No. 120 (FALL 1998), pp. 52-134 Published by: Skidmore College Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40549054 . Accessed: 01/06/2012 14:20 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Skidmore College is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Salmagundi. http://www.jstor.org Isaiah Berlin IN CONVERSATION WITH STEVEN LUKES I. FromRiga to Oxford Childhood and the Russian Revolution SL: Tellme about your father IB: My fatherwas theadopted grandson of a richman who was a timbermerchant who owned forestsin Russia.The timberwas floated downthe river and then sawn in Riga, where there were sawmills, and then exportedto the West. My fatherwas theperson who went to the West and dealtwith various businesses in westerncountries, and consequently,as wellas knowingRussian and German, both of whichhe knewperfectly, he also learntEnglish and French. SL: Is ittrue that your family was originallyHasidicl IB: Certainly.I am descended,as indeedYehudi Menuhin is, from thefounder of theChabad Hasidim, now normally known as Lubavich. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 53 The founderwas a Rabbi called Shneur Zalman, who was then called Shneersonbecause Jewshad tohave familynames. He was bornsome time in the firsthalf of the 18thCentury. He died in 1812. He was the creator of that particularbranch of the Hasidic movement. There were many branches.He lived in a towncalled Lubavichi and he had his courtthere and my familywas directlydescended fromhim. My grandparentswere pious Hasidim. SL: Oh, your grandparentswere. IB: Absolutely,hundred percent. My parentswere broughtup in it. SL: So yourfather rebelled against it! IB: No, driftedfrom it. Became évolué. SL: Withoutit leaving traces! IB: No, he took a great interestin it. Sentimentallydisposed. My mother too, they were firstcousins. They were both descendants. I rememberas a child being taken to a little synagogue created by my adoptive greatgrandfather who was a veryrich Hasid in Riga. SL: So he was also a Hasid! IB: Yes, inevitably,he wouldn't have adopted my grandfatherif he hadn't been. They reallywere a veryclose-knit body of people. They used to go and see the Rebbe, as he was called, once a year. I can't remember when it was, probablyPassover or some such time.Women wentin order to ask advice. For example ifthey wanted children he mightin some way tryto help them,by praying to God; and men went for advice about business or about whom you should marryyour daughtersto. He was a guru. He was the Delphic oracle, this man. But of course now it has degenerated. 54 ISAIAH BERLIN SL: Butthey have a verypowerful continuity, the Hasidim. IB: I am afraidso. SL: And thegenerations continue. And so foryour father to have driftedaway was surelythen exceptional. IB: No, notat all. By hisgeneration, a great many Jews had drifted intosecular life. I thinkby that time the relative emancipation was suchin Russiathat all mycousins were not Hasidim at all. His brothersand sisters weren't,his cousinsweren't. He didn'tbecome a flamingatheist. Some did.One ofthe cousins became a memberof the Cheka. My father'ssister was nearlyarrested for some kind of revolutionary activity in Warsawat one stagein the1905 Revolution and so on. SirLewis Namierexplained thisextremely clearly. He said thatEast EuropeanJudaism was a frozen massuntil the rays the Western Enlightenment began to beaton it.Then someof itremained frozen, some evaporated - thatmeant assimilation anddrifting, and somemelted into powerful streams: one was socialism and theother Zionism. That's exactly right. SL: Well howdoes yourfamily fit into that! IB : Neitherone nor the other. My mother was a Zionist,but my father was not.He was simplyhalf-molten, he remainedin a quietpool. SL: An agnostic! IB : Well,yes. He wentto Synagogue. He thoughthe believed in God. He hopedthere was a futurelife. He regardedhimself as a memberof the Jewishcommunity as indeedI do, exceptI happennot to believe in God. It makeslittle difference. Now of course,the Hasidim have becomea somewhataggressive movement and a numberhave becomepolitically very,very reactionary. SL: So youlived in Riga. Wasit a verycosmopolitan city! A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 55 IB: No, it was mainlyGerman, basically German. There were not manyRussians, and of course Letts. SL: Giveme a sketchof the sociology of Riga at thattime. IB: At thetop were the Baltic barons. They were of German origin, fanaticalsupporters of the Czarist throne and they held high offices in the Russiangovernment. They were not too popular in that country. At home theytended to speakGerman. Below themcame the prosperous German merchantstogether with Scandinavians - Danes, Swedes, as well as Scotsmenand Englishmen - a colonyof merchants who were basically responsiblefor exporting Russian goods to the west. I don'tsuppose that thetotal inhabitants of Riga could have numbered more than two hundred thousandand perhaps there was a foreigncolony of saytwenty thousand and say threethousand Russians, sixty thousand Germans and forty thousandJews and a hundredto a hundredand fifty thousand Letts. SL: So at thetop of the scale werethe Baltic barons and thenthe rich merchants.And then! IB: Thencame theJews. Now theprosperous Jews spoke German, since theycouldn't mostly get theirchildren into Russian universities, mainlybecause there was a strictquota for Jews. It was a verysore point. A good manysent their children, who spoke perfectGerman, to the Universityof Berlinor Koenigsberg.Then there came themiddle class RussianJews who talkedRussian, and thencame theJews of theself- createdGhetto. Riga was outsidethe Pale. TheGhetto was notan official ghettoand they were employed by other Jews. You see,Jews could remain outsidethe Pale ofSettlement ifthey were rich beyond a certainpoint. If the turn-overof theirbusiness was morethan so much,if theywere merchantsof theFirst Guild so-called,or if theywere professionals or artisans- doctors,dentists, metal workers, milkmen and the like. If you werea Jewishdentist you might have thirty assistants, none of whom knew anythingabout dentistry; you bribed the police and they were allowed to stay. 56 ISAIAH BERLIN SL: So yourfamily was German-speaking! IB: Germanand Russian. SL: As a boy,what language did you speak! IB: My nursetalked German but my governess- and thiswas deliberate- talkedRussian. My parentstalked Russian to me. SL: Andof course never Yiddish! IB: NeverYiddish. They spoke it to theirparents but not to each other. SL: Andyour father was sellingwood! IB: Yes, timber. SL: Whenyou were eight the Russian Revolution occurred, IB : In 19 15 myparents moved to Petrograd to be nearertheir forests, lestthe German armies cut them off. En routewe lived near a villagewhere therewere young women in gauze dresseswho picked mushrooms and youngofficers waiting to be sentto thefront, and soldiers who sang and playedbalalaikas. There was an old squire slowly dying in his manor house in a wildpark. It was likesomething in Turgenev,or in Chekhov.It was a ratherunique kind of experience for somebody aged six. SL: Theywent to Petrograd, your parents, because they foresaw IB: The mainoffice was there. SL: /see. Andyou arrived in Petrogradin 1916. IB: Yes. A Conversationwith Steven Lukes 57 SL: And thenearly in 1917, in February,the first revolution oc- curred. IB: Correct.I saw thecrowd fraternising with the revolutionaries. Bannersflying saying 'Land and Liberty','All Power to the Duma', 'Down withthe Czar'. SL: Andyour family was whollyin favour of this! IB: Entirely.I didn'tknow anybody who wasn't.My fatherhad Russianfriends who were not Jews, but they were all liberalsand in favour, certainly.The wholefamily, my father's four brothers, my mother's three sisters,were all in favourof therevolution. There was greatexcitement. The Jewishdisabilities were gradually removed. SL: Was ita verypolitically conscious family! IB:IB: No. But aftersome months they heard of Leninand Trotsky. SL: Andwhat did theyhear! IB: They thoughtthey were terriblepeople, who were going to depriveeverybody of their property, oppress the people, create a reignof terror.That' s whatthey thought. I never met a Russiancommunist in those days.No memberof my family joined the Communist Party. Some were SRs - Social Revolutionaries- I had an unclewho was one of theSR Militia,who afterwardsbecame an Israelihero because he dulycreated Palmach,the frappe de force ofthe Israelis. It's along story.There is a splendidmemorial to him.He was a left-wingfigure. SL: Andwas he moresympathetic to theBolsheviks than the rest of thefamily! IB : No. He wascalled Isaac Landsberg,he was a boxer,a wrestlerand a footballplayer. Not very usual in Russian middle-class families, least of all amongJews. He marriedmy aunt. He was also a firstcousin of my 58 ISAIAH BERLIN father.He joinedthe Russian army in 1914,then became a memberof the SR militia.He cameto our flat in Petrograd with a hugeMauser pistol. This so frightenedmy mother, she put it in a bathof
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