The Influence of Russia and 1917

The Russian revolutions of 1917

Berlin was born in Riga in June 1909, when the lands that later became Latvia were still a part of the Russian Empire. In 1915, to avoid the advance of the German army during the First World War, the family moved to Russia proper, and in 1916 to the imperial capital, Petrograd. It was there that the young Berlin saw his first opera – Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov – and first read Russian translations of Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas. He encountered political and cultural currents that would influence individuals and families, nations and empires, and have a significant bearing on his own psyche.

On 8 March 1917 (23 February in the Old Style Russian calendar) the February Revolution began in the capital. Berlin and his family watched from the safety of their apartment as crowds surged down the street outside, waving placards demanding land, liberty, and the end of Tsar Nicolas II's rule. Forces long suppressed, ranging from liberal to radical social democratic, had now been unleashed. Later that day, Berlin went for a walk with his governess. On the street they encountered a group of men dragging another man between them. The young Isaiah was unsure of who the captive man was, or what was going on, but the sight of the man – white-faced and struggling to escape – left a significant imprint on his character, one that would inform his emotional and philosophical aversion to violence and extremes. Berlin later learned that the man was a policeman, who he assumed was being taken away to his death by lynching.

The instability of the Russian political situation intensified. By October 1917 the Provisional Government of Alexander Kerensky was on the brink: throughout the spring and summer the government had co-existed uneasily with the Soviets (councils of workers) that had formed in February, notably the Petrograd Soviet. This awkward arrangement became known as 'dual power'. Meanwhile, Russia’s engagement in the First World War against the Central Powers continued to go badly. On 7 November (25 October, Old Style) the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known by the alias Lenin, seized power in Petrograd, and overthrew the Provisional Government. Soon afterwards they withdrew Russia from the First World War, and established the world's first socialist state, the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. The Russian Civil War began at the same time, fought by the Bolsheviks, or Red Army, against the disparate anti-Bolshevik alliance known as the White Army. The conflict plunged the country into further violent upheaval, which lasted until 1922.

Berlin’s parents sought to leave the repressive, violent, invasive new society that was being built around them. They left for Riga on 5 October 1920, and then moved on to London in February 1921. Berlin had left Russia behind him but its influence would never leave him. Russian was his first language, and even though he spent the rest of his life in Britain he always described himself as a Russian Jew. His brief experience of revolutionary violence, his fascination and engagement with Russian culture, and his antipathy towards the Soviet regime all became fundamental aspects of his intellectual outlook.