 Berlin often noted the dangers of utopianism, and stressed the need for a measure of political pragmatism. He may therefore appear to have been staunchly in the tradition of ‘political realism’, typically seen as running from Machiavelli (or Thucydides) through to recent scholars, and practitioners, of realpolitik such as E. H. Carr, George Kennan or Henry  Kissinger.[29]  Yet this was not quite so. Berlin did indeed seek to warn against the dangers of idealism, and to chasten it, in order to save it from itself and better defend it against cynicism. But in writing of ‘realism in politics’ he distinguished between a correct perception of reality, free of emotional distortions, and another, ‘more sinister’ sense of the term, deployed by people who admitted to being ‘realists’, ‘usually to explain away some unusually mean or brutal decision’. In this sense, ‘realistic’ had come to mean ‘harsh and brutal, not shrinking from what is usually considered immoral, not swayed by soft sentimental moral considerations’; it was also identified, in Berlin’s mind, with the ‘identification of what is good and what is successful’, and a tendency to celebrate ‘the big battalions, marching down a broad avenue, with all the unfulfilled possibilities, all the martyrs and visionaries, wiped out’ (2000a, 163; 2002a, 103–6). While he insisted on the importance of a ‘sense of reality’, Berlin was highly critical of the second form of ‘political realism’, which scornfully disregarded moral ideals or scruples, and embraced dubious means to achieve desired ends. He also saw this sort of cynical, brutal realism as a powerful political force in the world (2002b, 343–4; see also Cherniss 2013, 67–87, 112–21, and Cherniss 2018).