Isaac Deutscher
Isaac Deutscher
Marxist historian of Trotsky's definitive biography, who coined the 'non-Jewish Jew'
"I still believe!" — indicting the Cold War and the Vietnam War before thousands of students at the 1965 Berkeley teach-in
Born into a Polish Jewish family, a prodigy in Hasidic scripture who became an atheist in his teens. Joined the Polish Communist Party in 1927; co-founded its first anti-Stalinist group and was expelled in 1932. Exiled to London in 1939. His Stalin: A Political Biography (1949) made him a world authority. Drawing on the Harvard Trotsky Archives, his three-volume life of Trotsky is widely regarded as among the greatest political biographies. A mentor to the 1960s New Left, he died suddenly in Rome in 1967.
Career timeline
- 1927Joins the illegal Communist Party of Poland (KPP) — editor of underground press
- 1931Tours the Soviet Union — declines professorships at Moscow and Minsk Universities
- 1932Co-founds the KPP's first anti-Stalinist group — expelled for opposing the 'social fascism' line
- 1939Exiled to London — joins The Economist as Soviet and military-affairs correspondent
- 1946–1947Leaves journalism to write books full-time
- 1949Publishes Stalin: A Political Biography — becomes a leading authority on Soviet affairs
- 1954–1963Completes the Trotsky trilogy: The Prophet Armed (1954), Unarmed (1959), Outcast (1963)
- 1965Speaks at the first Berkeley Vietnam teach-in — emerges as an intellectual mentor of the New Left
- 1966–1967Delivers the G. M. Trevelyan Lectures at Cambridge — posthumously published as The Unfinished Revolution