Isaac Deutscher (3 April 1907 – 19 August 1967) was a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
Marxist historian, journalist and political activist of
PolishPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
-
JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
ish birth. He is best known as a biographer of
Leon TrotskyLeon Trotsky , born Leyba Davidov Bronstein , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. He was one of the leaders of the Russian October Revolution, second only to Lenin...
and
Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953...
and as a commentator on
SovietThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
affairs. His three-volume biography of Trotsky, in particular, was highly influential among the British
New LeftThe New Left were the left-wing movements in different countries in the 1960s and 1970s that, unlike the earlier leftist focus on union activism, instead adopted a broader definition of political activism commonly called social activism. The U.S...
.
Early life, Poland
Deutscher was born in
ChrzanówChrzanów is a town in south Poland with 39,704 inhabitants . It is situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship and is the capital of Chrzanów County.- History :*To 1809...
, a town in the
GaliciaGalicia is a historical region in East-Central Europe, currently divided between Poland and Ukraine, named after the Ukraіniаn city of Halych. The nucleus of historic Galicia is formed of three regions of western Ukraine: Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk.-Tribal area:The region has a turbulent...
region of
PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, into a family of religiously observant Jews. He studied with a Hasidic
rebbeRebbe , which means master, teacher, or mentor, is a Yiddish word derived from the identical Hebrew word Rabbi. It mostly refers to the leader of a Hasidic Jewish movement...
and was acclaimed as a prodigy in the study of the
TorahThe term "Torah" , refers either to the Five Books of Moses or to the entirety of Judaism's founding legal and ethical religious texts...
and the
TalmudThe Talmud is a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, customs, and history. It is a central text of mainstream Judaism....
. By the time of his bar mitzvah, however, he had lost his faith. He "tested
GodGod is a deity in theistic and deistic religions and other belief systems, representing either the sole deity in monotheism, or a principal deity in polytheism....
" by eating unkosher food at the grave of a
tzadikTzadik is a title which is generally given to those who are considered to be righteous such as a spiritual master or rebbe. The root of the word tzadik, is tzedek , which means justice or righteousness. This term thus refers to one who acts righteously.In Arabic the word/name "saadiq" , has a...
(holy person) on
Yom KippurYom Kippur , also known as the Day of Forgiveness, is the holiest day of the year for religious Jews. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. Jews traditionally observe this holy day with a 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue services...
. When nothing happened, he became an
atheistAtheism can be either the rejection of theism,or the position that deities do not exist.In the broadest sense, it is the absence of belief in the existence of deities....
.
Deutscher first attracted notice as a poet, when at 16 he began publishing poems in Polish literary periodicals. His verse, in Yiddish and
PolishPolish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions...
, concerned Jewish and Polish
mysticismMysticism is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight. Mysticism usually centers on a practice or practices intended to nurture those experiences or...
, history and mythology, and he attempted to bridge the gulf between Polish and Yiddish culture. He also translated poetry from
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
,
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
,
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
, and Yiddish into Polish.
Deutscher studied literature, history, and philosophy as an extramural student at the Jagellonian University in
KrakówKraków , in English also spelled Krakow or Cracow and pronounced
, is one of the largest and oldest cities in Poland and a popular tourist destination. Its historic centre was inscribed on the list of World Heritage Sites as the first of its kind...
. At 18 he left Kraków for
WarsawWarsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River roughly from both the Baltic Sea coast and the Carpathian Mountains. Its population as of 2009 was estimated at 1,709,781, and the Warsaw metropolitan area at approximately 2,785,000...
, where he studied philosophy, and economics and became a
MarxistMarxism is the political philosophy and economic worldview based upon a materialist interpretation of history, a Marxist analysis of capitalism, a theory of social change, and an atheist view of human liberation derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; three primary aspects of...
. Around 1927 he joined the illegal
Polish Communist PartyThe Communist Party of Poland was a historical communist party in Poland. It was a result of the fusion of Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania and the Polish Socialist Party-Left in the Communist Workers Party of Poland .-1918-1921:The KPRP was founded on 16 December 1918 as...
and became the editor of the party's underground press. In 1931 he toured the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
, seeing the economic conditions under the first Five Year Plan. Here Moscow University and Minsk University offered him posts as a professor of the history of socialism and of Marxist theory. He declined these offers and returned to his underground work in Poland. On his return Deutscher co-founded the first anti-Stalinist group in the Polish Communist Party, protesting the party line that Nazism and Social Democracy were "not antipodes but twins". This contradicted the then
official Communist lineThe Third Period was the policy adopted by the Comintern at the end of the Soviet Union's New Economic Policy in 1928 and was in place until the adoption of the Popular Front policy in 1935....
, which saw the social democrats, or "social fascists", as the greatest enemies of the Communist Party. In 1933 Deutscher published an article called "The Danger of Barbarism over Europe", in which he urged the formation of a
united socialist-Communist frontThe united front is a form of struggle that may be pursued by revolutionaries. The basic theory of the united front tactic was first developed by the Comintern, an international socialist organisation created by revolutionaries in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.According to the theses of...
against
NazismNazism, known officially in German as National Socialism , is the totalitarian ideology and practices of the Nazi Party or National Socialist German Workers’ Party under Adolf Hitler, and the policies adopted by the dictatorial government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.Nazism is often considered...
. Deutscher was expelled from the party for "exaggerat[ing] the danger of Nazism and ... spreading panic in the Communist ranks." He became a
TrotskyistTrotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party...
, but broke with official Trotskyism in 1938, being opposed to Trotsky's decision to found a
Fourth InternationalThe Fourth International is an international communist organisation which opposes both capitalism and Stalinism. Consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky, it is dedicated to helping the working class bring about socialism....
. Later he joined the
Polish Socialist PartyThe Polish Socialist Party was one of the most important Polish left-wing political parties from its inception in 1892 until 1948....
.
Move to UK and journalism (1939 - 1947)
In April 1939 Deutscher left Poland for
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
as a correspondent for a Polish-Jewish newspaper for which he had worked as a proof reader for fourteen years. This move saved his life and paved the way for his future career. He never returned to Poland and never saw any of his family again. In London he worked as a correspondent for the Polish newspaper, and for a while he joined the Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers League.
When
GermanyNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
occupied Poland in September 1939, and his connection with his newspaper was severed, he taught himself English and began writing for English magazines. He was soon a regular correspondent for the leading weekly
The EconomistThe Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in an office in the City of Westminster, London. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843. While The Economist calls itself a...
. In 1940 he joined the Polish Army in
ScotlandScotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, but was interned as a dangerous subversive. Released in 1942, he joined the staff of
The Economist and became its expert on Soviet affairs and military issues, and its chief European correspondent. He also wrote for
The ObserverThe Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In about the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a left-liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-History:The...
as a roving European correspondent under the pen-name "Peregrine".
He left journalism in 1946-7 to write books. Deutscher's name (with the remark "Sympathiser only") subsequently appeared on
Orwell's listOrwell's list, prepared in 1949, consisted of notable writers and other individuals by the English author George Orwell, shortly before he died. It comprises names of people he considered to be unsuitable as possible writers for the Information Research Department's anti-communist propaganda...
, a list of people (many writers and journalists) which
George OrwellEric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist and journalist...
prepared in March 1949 for the
Information Research DepartmentThe Information Research Department, founded in 1948 by Christopher Mayhew MP, was a department of the British Foreign Office set up to counter Russian propaganda and infiltration, particularly amongst the western labour movement....
, a propaganda unit set up at the Foreign Office by the Labour government. Orwell considered the listed people to have pro-communist leanings and therefore to be inappropriate to write for the IRD.
Biographer and academic (1948 - 1967)
Deutscher published his first major work,
Stalin, A Political Biography in 1949. This controversial work is more polemical than academic. Deutscher was still a committed Trotskyist, but in the book Deutscher gave Stalin what he saw as his due for building a form of
socialismSocialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on...
in the Soviet Union, even if it was, in Deutscher's view, a perversion of the vision of
MarxKarl Heinrich Marx was a Germanphilosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, communist and revolutionary, whose ideas are credited as the foundation of modern communism...
,
LeninVladimir Ilyich Lenin , born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov , was the Bolshevik Leader of the 1917 October Revolution, and the first Head of State of the Soviet Union; in the course of his political career, he used the pseudonyms Lenin, V. I. Lenin, Nikolai Lenin, and N. Lenin...
and Trotsky.
The Stalin biography made Deutscher a leading authority on Soviet affairs and the
Russian RevolutionThe Russian Revolution is the collective term for the series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. In the first revolution of February 1917 the Czar was deposed and replaced by a Provisional government...
. He followed it up with his most ambitious work, a three-volume biography of Trotsky:
The Prophet Armed (1954),
The Prophet Unarmed (1959) and
The Prophet Outcast (1963). These books were based on detailed research into the Trotsky Archives at
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
. Much of the material contained in the third volume was previously unknown, since Trotsky's widow,
Natalia SedovaNatalia Ivanovna Sedova is best known as the second wife of Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary. She was, however, also an active revolutionary in her own right and wrote on cultural matters pertaining to Marxism...
, gave him access to the closed section of the Archives. British Prime Minister
Tony BlairAnthony Charles Lynton "Tony" Blair is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
declared in 2006 that the trilogy "made a very deep impression on me and gave me a love of political biography for the rest of my life." Deutscher planned to conclude his series with a study of Lenin, but
Life of Lenin remained incomplete at the time of his death, partly due to a politically-motivated denial of a university position to Deutscher.
In the 1960s the upsurge of left-wing sentiment that accompanied the
Vietnam WarThe Vietnam War or the Second Indochina War was a Cold War military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1959 to 30 April 1975...
(see The Sixties) made Deutscher a popular figure on university campuses in both Britain and the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. His Trotskyism had by then become a form of
Marxist humanismMarxist humanism is a branch of Marxism that primarily focuses on Marx's earlier writings, especially the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 in which Marx espoused his theory of alienation, as opposed to his later works, which are considered to be concerned more with his structural...
, although he never renounced Trotsky. In 1965 he took part in the first "Teach-In" on Vietnam at the
University of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley is a public research university located in Berkeley, California, United States. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley offers some 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines...
, where thousands of students listened to his indictment of the Cold War. He was G. M. Trevelyan Lecturer at
Cambridge UniversityThe University of Cambridge , located in the City of Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom, is the second oldest university in the English-speaking world and the fourth oldest in Europe...
for 1966-67, and also lectured for six weeks at the
State University of New YorkThe State University of New York, abbreviated SUNY is a system of public institutions of higher education in New York, United States. It is the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the world, with a total enrollment of 438,361 students, plus 1.1 million...
. In spring 1967 he guest lectured at
New York UniversityNew York University is a private, nonsectarian, research university in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
,
PrincetonPrinceton University a private university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League and is considered one of the Colonial Colleges....
, Harvard and
ColumbiaColumbia University in the City of New York is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City...
. The G. M. Trevelyan Lectures, under the title
The Unfinished Revolution, were published after his sudden and unexpected death in Rome in 1967. A memorial prize honouring him, called the
Deutscher Memorial PrizeThe Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize is an annual prize given in honor of historian Isaac Deutscher and his wife Tamara Deutscher for new books published in English "which exemplifies the best and most innovative new writing in or about the Marxist tradition." It has been on-going since...
, is awarded annually to a book "which exemplifies the best and most innovative new writing in or about the Marxist tradition".
In relation to Judaism and Zionism
Despite being an atheist and a life-long socialist, Deutscher emphasised the importance of his Jewish heritage. He coined the expression "non-Jewish Jew" to apply to himself and other Jewish humanists. Deutscher admired
Elisha ben AbuyahElisha ben Abuyah was a rabbi and Jewish religious authority born in Jerusalem sometime before 70 CE. After he adopted a worldview considered heretical by his fellow Tannaim and betrayed his people, the rabbis of the Talmud refrained from relating teachings in his name and referred to him as the...
, a Jewish
hereticHeresy is proposing some unorthodox change to an established system of belief, especially a religion, that conflicts with the previously established opinion of scholars of that belief such as canon. It is sometimes confused with apostasy which is disaffiliation from orthodoxy and blasphemy which is...
of the 2nd century AD. But he had little time for specifically Jewish politics. In Warsaw, he joined the Communist Party, not the
Jewish BundThe General Jewish Labour Bund of Lithuania, Poland and Russia , generally called The Bund or the Jewish Labour Bund, was a secular Jewish socialist party in Central and Eastern Europe operating predominantly between the 1890s and the 1930s...
, whose "Yiddishist" views he opposed.
His definition of his Jewishness was: "Religion? I am an atheist. Jewish nationalism? I am an
internationalistInternationalist may refer to:* Internationalism , a movement to increase cooperation across national borders* The Internationalist Review, an e-journal founded in Maastricht* The Internationalist, a magazine based in Seattle...
. In neither sense am I therefore a Jew. I am, however, a Jew by force of my unconditional solidarity with the persecuted and exterminated. I am a Jew because I feel the pulse of Jewish history; because I should like to do all I can to assure the real, not spurious, security and self-respect of the Jews."
Before
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Deutscher opposed
ZionismZionism is the international political movement that originally supported the reestablishment of a homeland for the Jewish People in Palestine. The area was the Jewish Biblical homeland, called the Land of Israel...
as economically retrograde and harmful to the cause of international socialism, but in the aftermath of
the HolocaustThe Holocaust , also known as The Shoah is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, a program of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany,...
he regretted his pre-war views, and argued a case for establishing
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
as a "historic necessity" to provide a home for the surviving Jews of Europe. In the 1960s he became more critical of Israel for its failure to recognize the dispossession of the Palestinians, and after the Six Day War of 1967 he demanded that Israel withdraw from the
occupied territoriesOccupied territory is territory under military occupation. Occupation is a term of art in international law; in accordance with Article 42 of the Laws and Customs of War on Land ; October 18, 1907, territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army...
. "This 'six day wonder'", he commented, "this latest, all-too-easy triumph of Israeli arms will be seen one day... to have been a disaster... for Israel itself."
His most famous statement regarding Israel is "A man once jumped from the top floor of a burning house in which many members of his family had already perished. He managed to save his life; but as he was falling he hit a person standing down below and broke that person’s legs and arms. The jumping man had no choice; yet to the man with the broken limbs he was the cause of his misfortune. If both behaved rationally, they would not become enemies. The man who escaped from the blazing house, having recovered, would have tried to help and consol the other sufferer; and the latter might have realized that he was the victim of circumstances over which neither of them had control. But look what happens when these people behave irrationally. The injured man blames the other for his misery and swears to make him pay for it. The other, afraid of the crippled man’s revenge, insults him, kicks him, and beats him up whenever they meet. The kicked man again swears revenge and is again punched and punished. The bitter enmity, so fortuitous at first, hardens and comes to overshadow the whole existence of both men and to poison their minds."
Selected Works
- Stalin: a Political Biography (1949)
- Soviet Trade Unions (1950)
- Russia After Stalin (1953)
- Russia, What Next? (1953)
- The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879-1921 (1954)
- Heretics and renegades: and other essays (1955)
- Russia in transition, and other essays (1957)
- The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921-1929 (1959)
- Great contest: Russia and the West (1960)
- The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky, 1929-1940 (1963)
- Isaac Deutscher on the Israeli-Arab War: an interview with the late Isaac Deutscher (1967)
- The Unfinished Revolution: Russia 1917-1967 (G. M. Trevelyan lectures) (1967)
- Non-Jewish Jew and other essays (Edited by Tamara Deutscher) (1968)
- An Open Letter to Władysław Gomułka and the Central Committee of the Polish Workers Party (1968)
- Russia, China, and the West 1953-1966 (Edited by Fred Halliday) (1970)
- Marxism in our time (Edited by Tamara Deutscher) (1971)
- Marxism, Wars, and Revolutions: essays from four decades (Edited by Tamara Deutscher) (1984)
Sources
- Cliff, Tony
Tony Cliff was a Trotskyist revolutionary activist. Born Yigael Gluckstein to a Jewish Zionist family in Palestine, Cliff moved to Britain, becoming a Trotskyist and rejecting Zionism from a Marxist perspective...
, "The End of the Road: Isaac Deutscher's Capitulation to Stalinism", 1963.
- Horowitz, David, Isaac Deutscher: The Man and his work. London: Macdonald, 1971.
- Labedz, Leopold
Leopold Labedz was an anti-communist Anglo-Polish commentator on the Soviet Union.Labedz was born to a Polish Jewish doctor in Russia. The family soon returned to Warsaw and the young Labedz decided to follow his father into the medical profession. He studied medicine in Paris...
"Issac Deutscher: Historian, Prophet, Biographer" pages 33-03 from Survey, Volume 30, Issue # 1-2, March 1988.
- Laqueur, Walter
Walter Zeev Laqueur is an American historian and political commentator.He was born in Breslau, Germany , to a Jewish family. In 1938 Laqueur left Germany for the British Mandate of Palestine. His parents, who were unable to leave, became victims of the Holocaust...
The Fate of the Revolution: Interpretations of Soviet History from 1917 to the Present, New York : Scribner, 1987 ISBN 0-684-18903-8.
- Neil Davidson, "The prophet, his biographer and the watchtower", International Socialism 104, 2004.
External links