Isaiah Berlin: A Life — 3: Petrograd and After

1. 1. Isaiah Berlin's family fled Riga for Andreapol in 1915 after a fire destroyed Mendel's timber stock and a German competitor denounced him to the police.
2. 2. In Andreapol, Berlin learned the Hebrew alphabet from an old rabbi who told the children that the letters embodied 'blood and tears'—a moment that moved Berlin to tears when recalling it 75 years later.
3. 3. At age seven, Berlin witnessed a mob dragging a tsarist policeman to his death during the February Revolution, an event that instilled in him a lifelong horror of violence and suspicion of political experiment.
4. 4. Berlin's family rejoiced at the Balfour Declaration in November 1917, and he remembered waving blue, white, and gold flags at a synagogue meeting.
5. 5. During the Bolshevik Revolution, the Berlin family's apartment building formed a house committee led by the stoker Koshkin, who ordered aristocrats to do menial labor, but the Berlins were exempted.
6. 6. Mendel Berlin decided to emigrate after the Cheka ransacked their villa in Pavlovsk, seizing jewelry that he had to ransom back.
7. 7. On the train to Riga in 1920, Marie Berlin was arrested for defending the Soviet Union's lack of anti-Semitism, and Mendel had to bribe a secret police officer to secure her release.
8. 8. Berlin attributed his unyielding Jewish identity to his mother Marie, who would never have assimilated, unlike his father Mendel, who would have assimilated happily if possible.
9. 9. Mendel Berlin secured visas for England, driven by Anglophilia and a desire for Isaiah to receive a British public-school education.
10. 10. Berlin arrived in England on February 20, 1921, ate bacon and eggs for his first meal, and played 'God Save the King' on the piano the next morning.