The Soviet Mind: Russian Culture in the Communist Era (Humanities and Society Translation Series)

This book contains some of Isaiah Berlin's never-before-published articles on the Soviet Union. There are accounts of several famous meetings between him and Soviet writers such as Pasternak and Akhmatova after World War II, as well as official documents he submitted to the British Foreign Office on the state of art in the Soviet Union under Stalin's rule; there are portraits of Mandelstam and Pasternak, and sketches of his impressions of Soviet culture after visiting the Soviet Union; and so on. Isaiah Berlin had direct ties to Russia both in life and culture, and had deep sympathy and understanding of the Russian intelligentsia. This book provides very precious material for us to understand the general conditions of cultural life in Russia during the Soviet period, as well as the encounters and fate of intellectuals.