Editing Isaiah Berlin (section)

== Early life ==
[[File:Isaiah Berlin plaque Riga.JPG|thumb|Plaque marking what was once Berlin's childhood home (designed by [[Mikhail Eisenstein]]) in Riga, engraved in Latvian, English, and Hebrew with the tribute "The British philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin lived in this house 1909–1915"]]
[[File:Spb_06-2012_English_Embankment_01.jpg|thumb|The [[English Embankment|Angliyskaya Embankment]] in [[Saint Petersburg]], where Berlin lived as a child during the Russian Revolutions]]
Isaiah Berlin was born on 6 June 1909 into a wealthy [[Jewish]] family, the only son of Mendel Berlin, a timber trader (and a direct descendant of [[Shneur Zalman]], founder of [[Chabad Hasidism]]), and his wife Marie (''née'' Volshonok).<ref>Joshua L. Cherniss and Steven B. Smith (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Isaiah Berlin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2018, p. 13.</ref><ref name="Isaiah Berlin 1998 pp. 52">''Isaiah Berlin: In Conversation with Steven Lukes'', Salmagundi, No. 120 (Fall 1998), pp. 52–134</ref> His family owned a timber company, one of the largest in the Baltics,<ref name="ISAIAH BERLIN:CONNECTION WITH RIGA">{{cite web|url=http://www.isaiahberlin.org/system/articles/en_pdfs/000/000/003/original/Isaiah_Berlin.Connection_with_Riga.pdf?1400230885|title=Isaiah Berlin: Connection with Riga |access-date=24 March 2018}}</ref> as well as forests in Russia,<ref name="Isaiah Berlin 1998 pp. 52"/> from where the timber was floated down the [[Daugava river]] to its sawmills in Riga. As his father, who was the head of the Riga Association of Timber Merchants,<ref name="ISAIAH BERLIN:CONNECTION WITH RIGA"/> worked for the company in its dealings with Western companies, he was fluent not only in [[Yiddish]], Russian, and German, but also in French and English. His Russian-speaking mother, Marie (Musya) Volshonok,<ref>In their matrimonial record from 1906, available at the Jewish genealogy site JewishGen.org, mother's name is spelled ''Musya Volshonok''.</ref> was also fluent in Yiddish and [[Latvian language|Latvian]].<ref name=ignatieff30>{{harvnb|Ignatieff|1998|p=30}}</ref> Isaiah Berlin spent his first six years in Riga and later lived in [[Andreapol]] (a small timber town near [[Pskov]], effectively owned by the family business)<ref name=ignatieff21>{{harvnb|Ignatieff|1998|p=21}}</ref> and [[Petrograd]] (now St Petersburg). In Petrograd, the family lived first on [[Vasilevsky Island]] and then on Angliiskii Prospekt on the mainland. On Angliiskii Prospekt, they shared their building with other tenants, including an assistant Minister of Finnish affairs namned Ivanov, Princess Emeretinsky, and the composer [[Maximilian Steinberg]] with his wife Nadezhda Rimskaya-Korsakova, the daughter of [[Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Berlin |first1=Isaiah |last2=Lukes |first2=Steven |date=1998 |title=Isaiah Berlin: In Conversation with Steven Lukes |journal=Salmagundi |issue=120, Fall|pages=59–60}}</ref> With the onset of the October Revolution of 1917, the fortunes of the building's tenants were rapidly reversed, with both the Princess Emeretinsky and Rimsky-Korsakov's daughter soon being made to stoke the building's stoves and sweep the yards.<ref name=ignatieff26>{{harvnb|Ignatieff|1998|p=26}}</ref> Berlin witnessed the [[February Revolution|February]] and [[October Revolution]]s both from his apartment windows and from walks in the city with his governess, where he recalled the crowds of protesters marching on the [[Palace Square|Winter Palace Square]].<ref name=ignatieff24>{{harvnb|Ignatieff|1998|p=24}}</ref>

One particular childhood memory of the February Revolution marked his lifelong opposition to violence, with Berlin saying:

{{blockquote|Well I was seven and a half and something, and then I was&nbsp;– did I tell you the terrible sight of the policeman being dragged&nbsp;– not policeman, a sharp shooter from the rooftop&nbsp;– being dragged away by a lynching bee […] In the early parts of the revolution, the only people who remained loyal to the Tsar was the police, the Pharaon, I've never seen [the term] Pharaon in the histories of the Russian Revolution. They existed, and they did sniping from the rooftops or attics. I saw a man like that, a Pharaon […]. That's not in the books, but it is true. And they sniped at the revolutionaries from roofs or attics and things. And this man was dragged down, obviously, by a crowd, and was being obviously taken to a not very agreeable fate, and I saw this man struggling in the middle of a crowd of about twenty […] [T]hat gave me a permanent horror of violence which has remained with me for the rest of my life.<ref>[https://lesleychamberlain.wordpress.com/2014/03/29/isaiah-berlin-and-the-policeman Isaiah Berlin and the Policeman] Posted on 29 March 2014, [[Lesley Chamberlain]]</ref>}}

[[File:Sir ISAIAH BERLIN 1909–1997 Philosopher and historian of ideas lived here 1922–1928 (2).jpg|thumb|upright|[[English Heritage]] [[blue plaque]] at 33 Upper Addison Gardens, Holland Park, London]]

Feeling increasingly oppressed by life under [[Bolshevik]] rule, which identified the family as bourgeoisie, the family left Petrograd, on 5 October 1920, for Riga, but encounters with [[antisemitism]] and difficulties with the Latvian authorities convinced them to leave, and they moved to Britain in early 1921 (Mendel in January, Isaiah and Marie at the beginning of February), when Berlin was 11.<ref name=ignatieff31>{{harvnb|Ignatieff|1998|p=31}}</ref> In London the family first stayed in [[Surbiton]] where he was sent to Arundel House for preparatory school, then within the year they bought a house in [[Kensington]] and six years later in [[Hampstead]].

Berlin's native language was Russian, and his English was virtually nonexistent at first, but he reached proficiency in English within a year at around the age of 12.<ref name=ignatieff33>{{harvnb|Ignatieff|1998|pp=33–37}}</ref> In addition to Russian and English, Berlin was fluent in French, German, and Italian, and he knew [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]], [[Latin]] and [[Ancient Greek]]. Despite his fluency in English, however, in later life Berlin's Oxford English accent would sound increasingly Russian in its vowel sounds.<ref>''The Book of Isaiah: Personal Impressions of Isaiah Berlin'', edited by Henry Hardy, (Boydell & Brewer 2013), p. 180</ref> Whenever he was described as an English philosopher, Berlin always insisted that he was not an English philosopher, but would forever be a Russian Jew: "I am a Russian Jew from Riga, and all my years in England cannot change this. I love England, I have been well treated here, and I cherish many things about English life, but I am a Russian Jew; that is how I was born and that is who I will be to the end of my life."<ref>''Cultural Diversity, Liberal Pluralism and Schools: Isaiah Berlin and Education'' (Routledge, 2006), Neil Burtonwood, p. 11</ref><ref>Dubnov A.M. (2012) "Becoming a Russian-Jew". In: ''Isaiah Berlin. Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History''. Palgrave Macmillan, New York</ref>