On Sir Isaiah Berlin

Sir Isaiah Berlin was one of the 20th century’s most influential British philosophers and political theorists. He was born in 1909 in Rīga, Latvia, and his childhood had a lasting influence on his life and academic work. We explore Sir Isaiah’s connections to Rīga with some interesting, relatively unknown stories. 

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Transcript

On Sir Isaiah Berlin

Sir Isaiah Berlin was one of the 20th century’s most influential philosophers and political theorists. Born in 1909, he spent his formative early years in Riga until 1915, in one of the city’s magnificent art nouveau buildings. His time in Riga was brief. However, his connection to the city and Latvia influenced his life and academic work. Although Berlin is celebrated for his essays on liberty and his opposition to political extremism, few people know about his Latvian origins. He is commemorated today in Latvia with a now occasional Isaiah Berlin Day lecture by a prominent international thinker at the Latvian National Library. We will explore Sir Isaiah’s connections to Latvia with some really interesting, relatively unknown stories. We will find things about Sir Isaiah that you, too, can discover in Rīga.

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Sir Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) was a Latvian-born British philosopher, political theorist, and historian of ideas renowned for his defence of liberalism and pluralism. Born in Riga, he moved with his family to Russia, witnessing the upheavals of the 1917 Revolution, before settling in England in 1921. Berlin was educated at St Paul’s School, London, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he became the first Jew elected to a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. He spent most of his career at Oxford, notably as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory and founding president of Wolfson College. Berlin’s influential essay “Two Concepts of Liberty” 1958 distinguished between negative and positive liberty and remains central to debates on freedom.

Berlin defined negative liberty as the absence of interference from others - freedom from external constraints or coercion. This concept is central to classical liberalism and is concerned with protecting individuals from the arbitrary power of authorities or the state.

Positive liberty is the freedom to be one’s own master - the ability to control one’s own life and realise one’s potential. It concerns self-mastery, autonomy, and the capacity to act upon one’s free will. Berlin warned that the pursuit of positive liberty could be abused, especially when interpreted collectively - where the state or a group claims to know an individual’s “true” interests. This can justify coercion and even totalitarianism, as seen in some modern political ideologies. Berlin cautioned that, historically, positive liberty has often been used to rationalise paternalism and authoritarianism.

He is also known for his concept of value pluralism - the idea that fundamental human values can be equally valid yet in conflict. Berlin argued that negative and positive liberty are valid human ideals but can conflict and are not always compatible. There is no absolute standard for setting the limits of either form of liberty. Societies must negotiate those boundaries, recognising the plurality and sometimes incompatibility of human values.

Underlying Berlin’s work is the idea that true liberty is essential for human responsibility. Only with a degree of freedom can individuals be held accountable for their actions and shape their destinies

Berlin was knighted in 1957 and awarded the Order of Merit in 1971. His legacy endures through his writing and annual lectures held in his honour in Riga, Oxford, and beyond.

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His early years in Latvia influenced Sir Isaiah Berlin’s philosophical thinking. He was born on 6 June 1909 in Riga, then part of the Russian Empire. He was the only child of Mendel Berlin, a prosperous timber merchant, and his wife, Marie Volshonok.

The Berlin family was well-off - Mendel Berlin’s timber business was one of the largest in the Baltics, with forests in Russia and sawmills in Riga. The timber was floated down the Daugava river to these mills. As a timber merchant dealing with Western companies, Mendel was fluent in Yiddish, Russian, German, French, and English, while Berlin’s mother spoke Yiddish, Russian, and Latvian.

The family resided at Alberta iela 2a, in an apartment building constructed in 1906. Walking along Alberta iela today, you’ll find yourself on one of Riga’s most beautiful streets, lined with stunning art nouveau buildings. At number 2a stands an exceptional example of this architecture, designed by the famous architect Mikhail Eisenstein. Do listen to my podcast, “On Rīga’s art nouveau architecture”. Look up at the façade, and you’ll see elaborate decorations, geometric ornaments, bands of glazed red tiles, and even an interesting ‘false floor’ that allows more natural light into the building while providing extra space for decorative elements. There are distinctive Egyptian motifs, including two sphinxes at the main entrance, symbolising security and female figures holding torches above the entrance. Today, a commemorative plaque on the building marks where Berlin lived from 1909 to 1915, with Latvian, English, and Hebrew text.

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Berlin’s childhood coincided with a turbulent period in European history. When World War I broke out in August 1914, life in Riga changed dramatically. The city was blockaded, German armies were approaching, and Jewish residents faced growing harassment from Russian authorities.

In the summer of 1915, after losing much of his timber stock in a fire and facing a lawsuit on trumped-up charges, Mendel Berlin left Riga for Western Russia, eventually settling in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg). Young Isaiah, just six years old when they left Riga, would witness the February and October Revolutions of 1917 in Petrograd, events that profoundly shaped his political philosophy. He later recalled seeing a mob drag a policeman through the streets, an image that instilled in him a lifelong aversion to political violence and ideological absolutism. The chaos of the Revolution and the Bolsheviks’ rise to power demonstrated the dangers of utopian ideologies, reinforcing his scepticism of historical determinism - the belief that history follows an inevitable path. This scepticism crystallised in his 1954 essay Historical Inevitability, where he argued that human agency, not impersonal forces, drives historical change.

In 1919, the Cheka (Soviet secret police) ransacked the Berlin family home in Petrograd. Mendel Berlin decided to leave Russia, with the family returning briefly to Riga in 1920. By this time, Riga was the capital of independent Latvia. The family lived in “considerably more modest circumstances” than before, probably at 86 Terbatas iela, where Isaiah was privately tutored.

Their stay was brief - just four months - before they emigrated to England in February 1921. Isaiah Berlin never returned to Riga except for a short visit in 1928.

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Here are some stories from Isaiah’s childhood that I think influenced his later philosophical thinking. 

First story. A seldom-discussed aspect of Berlin’s Riga childhood is his lifelong retention of Latvian nursery rhymes and folk songs, which he hummed well into adulthood. His Latvian governess, tasked with his early education, took him on walks through Riga’s streets, where he observed the city’s eclectic architecture and heard local melodies. These auditory memories became anchors, resurfacing during his later philosophical reflections on cultural identity. Notably, Berlin could still recite rhymes learned in Riga decades after leaving, a detail omitted from most biographies but confirmed through family correspondence.

Next story. While the Alberta iela 2a plaque marks Berlin’s birthplace, the building contains a hidden architectural feature reflecting Riga’s artistic ambitions. Designed by Mikhail Eisenstein, the structure incorporates a decorative “empty floor” between the third and fourth levels, creating an optical illusion of heightened grandeur. Adorned with geometric tiles and floral motifs, this non-functional space metaphorically paralleled the Berlin family’s position - prominent yet perpetually suspended between Riga’s German, Russian, and Latvian cultural strata. Young Isaiah’s nursery overlooked this illusory facade, perhaps planting early seeds for his later critiques of ideological facades in political thought.

A further story. Before WWI, the Berlins participated in Riga’s elite summer exodus to Baltic seaside resorts like Dubulti (now part of Jūrmala). Family photographs from 1911 show Isaiah, aged two, surrounded by Volshonok relatives in elaborate Edwardian attire against backdrops of wooden villas. These holidays followed rigid social protocols: morning swims in the Gulf of Riga, afternoon promenades along pine-lined boulevards, and evening concerts featuring German Lieder. The ritualised tranquillity of these summers contrasted sharply with the violence Berlin later witnessed in Petrograd, forming an unconscious benchmark for his ideal of “negative liberty” - spaces free from ideological intrusion.

An unpleasant story. Most accounts highlight the family’s 1915 departure from Riga but overlook their brief 1920 return under Latvia’s new independence. Forced to flee Petrograd after Bolshevik confiscation of their property, the Berlins expected refuge in Riga. Instead, they encountered virulent anti-Semitism at the border: customs officials tore open Marie Berlin’s luggage, scattering underwear publicly to humiliate her, while Mendel faced accusations of Bolshevik sympathies despite being a victim of Soviet repression. This four-month interlude at Terbatas iela 86 - a stark downgrade from their Alberta iela mansion - revealed Latvia’s complex post-imperial tensions, where Jewish residents faced suspicion from both Latvian nationalists and remaining Baltic Germans.

A nice story. Marie Berlin’s unfulfilled artistic ambitions profoundly shaped her son’s intellectual development. Fluent in four languages, she hosted weekly salons in their Alberta iela apartment, inviting Riga’s Jewish intelligentsia to debate literature and music. Though Marie never published her poetry, she instilled in Isaiah a love for Pushkin and Tolstoy - he read War and Peace at age 10 - and arranged his first opera attendance at Riga’s German Theatre. Her thwarted creativity may have influenced Berlin’s later emphasis on self-realisation (“positive liberty”), while her salon culture prefigured his legendary Oxford conversational style.

A terrible story. Nearly all of Berlin’s Riga relatives perished in the 1941 Rumbula massacres, a fact rarely addressed in his public writings. After the family emigrated in 1921, they maintained correspondence with aunts, uncles, and cousins remaining in Riga. Letters ceased abruptly in August 1940. Postwar inquiries revealed that Nazi Einsatzgruppen, aided by Latvian collaborators, murdered over 25,000 Riga Jews in two days at Rumbula Forest. Though Berlin seldom discussed this loss publicly, it arguably deepened his philosophical opposition to totalitarianism and his insistence on moral pluralism as a bulwark against dehumanising ideologies.

An interesting story. Berlin’s Riga environment created a five-language matrix shaping his intellectual range:

• Yiddish: Spoken with paternal grandparents from Hasidic Vitebsk

• German: Language of Mendel’s timber contracts and Riga’s merchant elite

• Russian: Marie’s preferred tongue for literature and home discourse

• Latvian: Overheard in markets and servants’ quarters

• French: Taught by governesses as a mark of refinement.

This linguistic stew enabled Berlin’s later mastery of European philosophical texts without translation - a skill colleagues at Oxford found both impressive and intimidating. His childhood code-switching between Riga’s linguistic spheres informed his concept of “value pluralism,” where multiple truth systems coexist without hierarchical resolution.

And last story. Berlin’s final Riga visit in 1928, aged 19, revealed a city transformed. Independent Latvia had Latvianised street names and marginalised the German-Russian elite. Walking past his birthplace on Alberta iela, now housing Soviet bureaucrats, he found Riga “provincial” compared to Oxford’s intellectual ferment. Yet this trip solidified his self-identification as a “Russian Jew from Riga” - a label he preferred over “British philosopher” - acknowledging roots while critiquing nationalism’s exclusionary tendencies.

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Facing anti-Semitic persecution under the Bolshevik regime, the Berlins fled to England in 1921. Arriving with minimal English, Berlin enrolled at St. Paul’s School in London, where he mastered the language and immersed himself in Western literature and philosophy. This transition from the tumult of revolutionary Russia to the stability of British academia sharpened his appreciation for liberal institutions and individual freedom. His experience as a “natural assimilator” in a foreign culture informed his later defence of negative liberty - freedom from external coercion - as a cornerstone of human dignity.

Berlin’s admission to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, marked the beginning of his formal philosophical training. He excelled in Literae Humaniores (classics) and later pursued Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE), earning a prize fellowship at All Souls College in 1932. At Oxford, he engaged with logical positivism through figures like A.J. Ayer but gradually shifted toward the history of ideas, influenced by R.G. Collingwood’s emphasis on historical context. This pivot reflected his growing belief that philosophical concepts cannot be divorced from their cultural and temporal settings, a theme central to his mature work. His first significant publication, Karl Marx: His Life and Environment (1939), critiqued Marx’s deterministic view of history, arguing that economic forces alone cannot explain human behaviour.

During World War II, Berlin worked for the British Information Services in New York and later the Foreign Office in Washington D.C., where he analysed Soviet politics. His 1945 visit to Leningrad proved pivotal: he met the poet Anna Akhmatova, whose work had been suppressed by Stalinist authorities. Their all-night conversation, interrupted by Randolph Churchill’s drunken intrusion, led to increased surveillance of Akhmatova by Soviet authorities. This encounter deepened Berlin’s understanding of totalitarianism’s human cost and reinforced his commitment to intellectual freedom. Akhmatova later dubbed him her “Guest from the Future”, symbolising his role as a bridge between Soviet repression and Western liberalism.

Berlin’s postwar writings synthesised his life experiences into two seminal ideas: negative and positive liberty and value pluralism. In his 1958 lecture Two Concepts of Liberty, he distinguished between freedom from interference (negative liberty) and freedom to self-realise (positive liberty), warning that the latter could justify authoritarianism if imposed uniformly. This dichotomy emerged from his observation of Soviet collectivism, which claimed to liberate citizens while erasing individual autonomy. Concurrently, his encounters with diverse cultures - from Riga’s multilingualism to Oxford’s intellectual debates - culminated in value pluralism. He argued that conflicting moral systems are irreconcilable, necessitating tolerance and compromise.

In 1966, Berlin co-founded Wolfson College, Oxford, as a graduate institution emphasising interdisciplinary scholarship and inclusivity. Its design reflected his pluralistic ethos: no high table, open common spaces, and a diverse student body. Wolfson became a physical manifestation of his belief that intellectual progress thrives in environments where differing viewpoints coexist. This project underscored his view that institutions, like individuals, must resist ideological rigidity to foster genuine dialogue.

Knighted in 1957 and awarded the Order of Merit in 1971, Berlin spent his final decades refining his ideas. His 1994 Message to the Twenty-First Century cautioned against the “fanatical certainty” of ideological movements, urging humility in the face of moral complexity. His death in 1997 marked the end of a life shaped by displacement, cultural synthesis, and steadfast defence of liberal pluralism.

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The Humanities and Social Sciences Reading Room at the National Library of Latvia was renamed in Berlin’s honour during the 2022 Isaiah Berlin Day celebrations. This space houses original correspondence between Berlin and his Riga relatives, including letters from his aunt Ida pleading for help to escape Nazi persecution. A bronze bust of Berlin, cast by sculptor Anthony Stones, was donated to the library in 2009 during the centenary of his birth.

Since 2009, Riga celebrated Isaiah Berlin Day until 2018, then held it again in 2020 (online due to Covid) and 2022. I think the 2022 event was the last occasion, which is sad, and the librarian at the National Library was unaware of an event this year. Perhaps this is something that the British Embassy in Riga could take on? In the past, the event has featured lectures by prominent academics and public intellectuals from around the world. The more recent celebrations have occurred at the National Library of Latvia, where the Humanities and Social Sciences Reading Room was renamed after Isaiah Berlin in 2022. Past speakers have included figures like Israeli academic and former politician Yuli Tamir in 2022, Canadian historian Margaret MacMillanin in 2020, the editor Henry Hardy in 2015, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, then President of Estonia in 2014, the author and broadcaster Michael Ignatieff in 2012, the author Anne Applebaum in 2010, and Timothy Garton Ash (a writer and Guardian newspaper commentator who I enjoy reading) in 2009.

I visited the National Library. This striking modern landmark on the left bank of the Daugava River in Riga is known as the “Castle of Light” (Gaismas pils). Designed by renowned Latvian-American architect Gunnar Birkerts, the building was inspired by Latvian folklore. Its glassy, angular form evokes both the mythical Castle of Light and the Glass Mountain, symbols of wisdom and aspiration in Latvian culture. To me, it resembles a ski jumping station, especially in mid-winter when there is snow around. 

Completed in 2014, the library stands 68 meters high and 170 meters long, with a dramatic, light-filled atrium beneath its jagged glass crown. It centralises Latvia’s vast national collection, which now exceeds 5 million items, and serves as a hub for research, lifelong learning, exhibitions, and cultural events. The library’s opening was celebrated with a symbolic human chain carrying books from its old locations, echoing the Baltic Way demonstration for independence. The Baltic Way was the topic in another podcast episode. Today, the Castle of Light is a repository of knowledge and a public venue, embodying Latvia’s commitment to culture, education, and national identity. 

The Berlin collection and his bronze bust are within the Humanities and Social Sciences Reading Room. To enter the reading room, you require a reader's pass. You must complete an online form or in person at the library, submit a passport-style photo, have an ID card or passport, and the card is issued. About five minutes - the National Library staff are super friendly and helpful. 

I paid my respects in front of Sir Isaiah’s bust, had a hushed chat with the reading room librarian, and tried to find The PR Handbook, in which I have a chapter in the section on Public Relations. Just for fun.

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A half-day Sir Isaiah Berlin walking tour around Rīga.

First, start at Alberta iela 2a to see Berlin’s childhood home and the commemorative plaque. You will be greeted by the two sphinx statues standing in front of the building. Hard to miss!

Then, explore other art nouveau buildings on Alberta iela, many of which were designed by the Jewish architect Mikhail Eisenstein. Visit the excellent Rīga Art Nouveau Museum at the other end of Alberta iela. Listen to my podcast on Rīga’s art nouveau architecture for more information about the museum.

Then, take a walk to Terbatas iela 86, where the family likely stayed during their brief return in 1920. Google Maps or a similar online app will help you precisely find this address as there is no plaque on the wall. It is a 30-minute walk, or hop on the number 3, 6 or 21 bus heading out of town and get off at the Tallinas iela stop.

Finally, visit the National Library of Latvia, home to the Isaiah Berlin Center and the venue for the Isaiah Berlin Day in the past. Jump on the number 3 bus from Tallinas iela back to the city centre and leave at the Nacionālā Bibliotēka stop. Get a visitor's pass from the information desk. They are very helpful there. Then, go up to the floor for the Humanities and Social Sciences Reading Room. The bust of Sir Isaiah is inside the reading room, which you need a reader pass to enter, but it is close to the floor-to-ceiling glass window, so it can be seen from outside the reading room with just a visitor pass. While at the library, admire the lit display of donated books that runs up to the top of the building. Quite spectacular!

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In a letter to Peter Brown, then Secretary of the British Academy, on 16 May 1995, Isaiah Berlin wrote, 

“I am proud and happy that some of my writings may see the light in the language of the country in which I was born and whose citizen I was during my early years in England. When one or two of my books were translated into Italian, I was acclaimed as a leading "Latvian philosopher". I do not wish to abjure this title, although basically I am afraid that I am an English writer. Still, the town of my birth is dear to me: I have many memories of it when it was a free city both before and after the First World War”.

Riga’s Isaiah Berlin landmarks - both physical and conceptual - reveal how a six-year residency shaped one of liberalism’s foremost thinkers. From the sphinx-guarded doorway of his birthplace at Alberta iela 2a to the National Library’s curated archives, these sites invite reflection on how place informs philosophy. For visitors, tracing Berlin’s Riga roots offers a historical journey and a lens to examine the enduring tensions between identity, memory, and exile. In the present world of political extremism, his work is as important today as it was when he gave his great philosophical lecture in the late 1950s.

[Illustration of Sir Isaiah Berlin by Arturo Espinosa, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons, music by SigmaMusicArt on Pixabay]