Liberties There's nothing Artificial about our Intelligence

The following conversation took place in Russian in 1995 at Headington House, Isaiah Berlin’s home near Oxford. ADAM MICHNIK: What do you consider yourself to be: an Englishman, a Jew, or a Russian? ISAIAH BERLIN: I have lived here for seventy years now and people see me as an Englishman. After all, Oxford is the essence of Britishness. But though I have become a bit Anglicized, I am still a Russian Jew. I am a Jew simply because one cannot cease being a Jew, not because I cultivate a Jewish culture or a Jewish tradition. Those are important things; however, we Jews have paid too high a price for them. If I were sure that by drinking this cup of coffee I could, just like that, turn all Jews into Danes, I would do it. I don’t know of a single Jew, converted or not, who is free of anxiety; it is as if all Jews feel a vague sense of unease. There are millions of Jews in the world whose children grow up with such a feeling.Assimilation was not successful. Many Jews cannot assimilate. They are a minority, and minorities suffer, and they strive to be better than the majority. If one lives in a foreign country and doesn’t like it there one can go back to the country one left, either one’s own or the one that one’s parents left. Only Jews cannot do this, because there is no such country. ADAM MICHNIK: And Israel? ISAIAH BERLIN: For those who were newcomers there, it was not home. True, those Jews who were born in Israel have their home. But Arabs, their enemies, are there too. They force them into war. Then perhaps it is better to live in New York? In any case, I would not be able to live in Israel. I would be unhappy there. ADAM MICHNIK: You were born in 1909 in Riga. Leszek Kołakowski, your Oxford friend, calls you in jest “The Great Son of the Latvian Nation.” ISAIAH BERLIN: Let’s just say that I am a peculiar kind of Latvian, and that there are no other Latvians like me. I know only a few Latvian words, ‘Kur tu teci, kur tu teci, gailīti mans?’, which means, ‘Where are you going, where are you going, my little rooster?’ — from a Latvian folk song. And ‘Cik maksā?’, ‘How much is it?’ That’s all. But my mother knew Latvian. My nanny taught her. ADAM MICHNIK: You come from a well-to-do intellectual family. ISAIAH BERLIN: My father was the adopted grandson of ISAIAH BERLIN, who purchased some land in 1862. During the reign of Tsar Alexander II, Jews could buy land. And when the railroads were built, the price of land went up. Berlin became a millionaire. His only [adopted] son married the daughter of a Hasidic rabbi. Because a Jew must be either a learned rabbi or a wealthy man, the sons of wealthy men married the daughters of rabbis. ISAIAH BERLIN did not have any children, so he adopted my grandfather, the son of his sister-in-law. His sister-in-law was really poor. She ran a small shop while her husband spent entire days in the synagogue. We lived in Riga, and my father owned forests and sawmills. Timber and planks went west, and my father went with them. He spoke English, French, and German — he had quite a way with his clients. Everything went well and then 1914 came. The Germans were victorious at Tannenberg and it looked as if they might enter Riga. Jews preferred them to the Russians if only because anti-Semitism among Germans was not as overt as in Russia. But my family feared that they would be cut off from their forests, and they went deep into Russia, to a village that belonged to my father’s firm. There were peasants there who cut the wood, the old landowner who was slowly dying, and public servants — officers who had not made it to the front, and their ladies in long muslin dresses. In a word, this was the Russia of Turgenev. We picked mushrooms and blueberries in a huge wood. From a child’s point of view, this was an absolute paradise. From there, we moved to Petrograd. ADAM MICHNIK: And there you witnessed the 1917 revolution? ISAIAH BERLIN: Yes. I remember my father took me out onto a balcony of our house. We lived at that time on Vasilevsky Island, and I saw people with banners that read “Down with the Tsar,” “All Power to the Duma,” “Down with War.” The crowd was not large and suddenly soldiers appeared. My father said: “Soon blood will spill. We’d better not watch.” Then the soldiers started to mingle with the crowd and father said: “It’s the revolution.” The first revolution, the February one, was liberal, and my parents liked it. Aunts and uncles went to the rallies and were entranced. “Kerensky’s wonderful! Lvov’s wonderful! What extraordinary people!” In the summer, we went to a small town called Staraya Russa. When we came back to Petrograd in September, I saw the posters of the Provisional Government. It had a multitude of parties — you cannot imagine how many of them there were. I saw young people who were tearing down posters and painting the hammer and sickle in their place. I liked that. My father was not enthusiastic. In general, in our circles, no one, at first, saw anything remarkable about this second revolution. The elevator wasn’t working. Newspapers were not being printed. Half the shops were closed. There were leaders of some sort. Everyone had heard of Lenin and Trotsky. They were always mentioned together as though they were some kind of company or other.ADAM MICHNIK: Lenin and Trotsky Inc. ISAIAH BERLIN: Indeed. I believe that Lenin was a fanatic, a dangerous one, though an honest man. Trotsky, however — a terrible hoodlum. And he had to be hanged. Why? I was never able to understand. Perhaps because he was a Jew