In addition to Tolstoy's philosophy of history, the author considers the social and political circumstances that produced such men as Herzen, Bakunin, Turgenev, Belinsky, and others of the Russian intelligentsia, who made up, as he describes, 'the largest single Russian contribution to social change in the world.' "Isaiah Berlin is an author without whom I could not have written these plays."
-Tom Stoppard, in The Coast of Utopia program