A prominent scholar here writes about two kinds of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian intellectuals: those with a passion for ideology (often the most extreme form); and those who, inspired by libertarian humanism, developed sophisticated critiques of ideology.

In this brilliant companion volume to her highly praised Toward Another Shore: Russian Thinkers Between Necessity and Chance, Aileen M. Kelly closely examines a humanist strand of Russian thought that has until now received little notice or understanding. She finds in the writings of Aleksandr Herzen, Anton Chekhov, and Mikhail Bakhtin a pioneering emphasis on the role of chance and contingency in nature and history. Their writing on this theme, she argues, establishes the importance of these humanists in the development of European thought.
Herzen, the principal subject of the...