Isaac Deutscher | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1907-04-03)3 April 1907 |
| Died | 19 August 1967(1967-08-19) (aged 60) |
| Nationality | Polish |
| Citizenship | British (from 1949) |
| Occupation(s) | Historian, biographer |
| Known for | Studies inSoviet history; biographies ofLeon Trotsky andJoseph Stalin |
| Spouse | Tamara Deutscher |
Isaac Deutscher (Polish:Izaak Deutscher; 3 April 1907 – 19 August 1967) was a PolishMarxist writer, journalist and political activist who moved to the United Kingdom before the outbreak ofWorld War II. He is best known as a biographer ofLeon Trotsky andJoseph Stalin and as a commentator onSoviet affairs.
His scholarly biographies of Trotsky and Stalin have received widespread acclaim,[1][2][3][4] with several reviewers ranking his three-volumeProphet trilogy among the greatest of political biographies;[5][6][7] some criticism has been directed at his overly sympathetic tone for the subject matter.[8][9] His three-volume biography of Trotsky was also highly influential among the BritishNew Left in the 1960s and 1970s.[10]
Deutscher was born inChrzanów, a town in theGalicia region of theAustro-Hungarian Empire (now in southernPoland), into a family of religiously observantJews. He studied with aHasidicrebbe and was acclaimed as a prodigy in the study of theTorah and theTalmud.[11] He lived through threepogroms in 1918 that followed the collapse of theAustro-Hungarian empire.[12] By the time of hisbar mitzvah, however, he had lost his faith. He "tested God" by eating non-kosher food at the grave of atzadik (holy person) onYom Kippur. When nothing happened, he became anatheist. Deutscher first attracted notice as a poet, when he began publishing poems in Polish literary periodicals at the age of sixteen. His verse, inYiddish andPolish, concerned Jewish and Polishmysticism, history and mythology, and he attempted to bridge the gulf between the Polish and Yiddish cultures. He also translated poetry fromHebrew,Latin,German, and Yiddish into Polish.[13]
Deutscher studied literature, history, and philosophy as an extramural student at theJagiellonian University inKraków.[14] Soon he left Kraków forWarsaw, where he studied philosophy, economics andMarxism. Around 1927, he joined the illegalCommunist Party of Poland (KPP) and became the editor of the party's underground press.[14] He wrote for the JewishNasz Przegląd ("Our Review") and for the MarxistMiesięcznik Literacki ("The Literary Monthly").[15] In 1931 he toured theSoviet Union, seeing the economic conditions under the firstFive Year Plan. TheUniversity of Moscow and theUniversity of Minsk offered him posts as professor of history ofsocialism and ofMarxist theory, but he declined the offers and returned to Poland.[14] Deutscher co-founded the first anti-Stalinist group in the Communist Party of Poland, protesting the party view thatNazism andsocial democracy were "not antipodes but twins."[14] This contradicted the thenofficial communist line, according to which social democrats were "social fascists", the greatest enemies of thecommunist party. In an article "The Danger of Barbarism over Europe", Deutscher urged the formation of aunited front of socialists andcommunists against Nazism. He was expelled from the KPP in 1932, officially for "exaggerating the danger of Nazism and spreading panic in the communist ranks."[14][16]
In April 1939, Deutscher left Poland forLondon as a correspondent for a Polish-Jewish newspaper for which he had worked as a proof reader for fourteen years.[14] 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. He became aBritish subject in 1949, taking his oath of allegiance on 12 May 1949.[17]
Germanyinvaded Poland in September 1939 and Deutscher's connection with his newspaper was severed. He taught himselfEnglish and began writing for English magazines. He was soon a regular correspondent for the leading weeklyThe Economist. He joined theTrotskyistRevolutionary Workers League. In 1940, he joined thePolish Army in Scotland, but was interned as a dangerous subversive. Released in 1942, he joined the staff ofThe Economist and became its expert on Soviet affairs and military issues, and its chief European correspondent. He also wrote forThe Observer as a roving European correspondent under the pen-name "Peregrine".[14] He was one of the so-called Shanghai Club (named after a restaurant in Soho) of left-leaning and emigre journalists that includedSebastian Haffner (also onThe Observer),E. H. Carr,George Orwell,Barbara Ward andJon Kimche.[18]
He left journalism in 1946–47 to write books.[14] Deutscher's name (with the remark "Sympathiser only") subsequently appeared onOrwell's list, a list of people (including many writers and journalists) whichGeorge Orwell prepared in March 1949 for theInformation Research Department (IRD), a propaganda unit set up at theForeign Office by theLabour government. Orwell considered the listed people to have pro-communist leanings and therefore to be inappropriate to write for the IRD.[19]
Deutscher published his first major work,Stalin, A Political Biography in 1949. In the book he gave Stalin what he saw as his due for building a form of socialism in the Soviet Union, even if it was, in Deutscher's view, a perversion of the vision ofKarl Marx,Vladimir Lenin andLeon Trotsky.[citation needed] The Stalin biography made Deutscher a leading authority on Soviet affairs and theRussian Revolution. He followed it up with his most ambitious work, a three-volume biography of Trotsky:The Prophet Armed (1954),The Prophet Unarmed (1959) andThe Prophet Outcast (1963). These books were based on detailed research into the Trotsky Archives atHarvard University. Much of the material contained in the third volume was previously unknown, since Trotsky's widow,Natalia Sedova, gave Deutscher access to the closed section of the archives. Deutscher planned to conclude his series with a study of Lenin, butThe Life of Lenin remained incomplete at the time of Deutscher's death, partly due to a politically motivated denial of a university position to him.[20] As later revealed,Isaiah Berlin, who was asked to evaluate the academic credentials of Deutscher, argued against such a promotion because of the profoundly pro-communist militancy of the candidate.[21]
In the 1960s, the upsurge ofleft-wing sentiment that accompanied theVietnam War made Deutscher a popular figure on university campuses in both Britain and the United States. By this time Deutscher had broken with conventional Trotskyism, although he never repudiated Trotsky himself and remained a committed Marxist. In 1965, Deutscher took part in the first "Teach-In" on Vietnam at theUniversity of California, Berkeley, where thousands of students listened to his indictment of theCold War.[14] He wasG. M. Trevelyan Lecturer at theUniversity of Cambridge for 1966–67 and also lectured for six weeks at theState University of New York.[14] In spring 1967, he guest-lectured atNew York University,Princeton, Harvard andColumbia.[14] The G. M. Trevelyan Lectures, under the titleThe Unfinished Revolution, were published after Deutscher's sudden and unexpected death inRome in 1967, where he went for anItalian TV broadcast. It was a play about the fall of Trotsky, written and directed byMarco Leto, starringFranco Parenti as Trotsky andRenzo Giovampietro as Stalin. A memorial prize honouring Deutscher, called theDeutscher Memorial Prize, is awarded annually to a book "which exemplifies the best and most innovative new writing in or about the Marxist tradition". In his works Deutschermade the distinction betweenclassical Marxism andvulgar Marxism.[22]
Despite being an atheist, Deutscher emphasised the importance of hisJewish heritage. He coined the expression "non-Jewish Jew", to apply to himself and otherhumanistic Jews. Deutscher admiredElisha ben Abuyah, a Jewishheretic of the 2nd century AD.[23] However, he did not engage in specifically Jewish politics. In Warsaw, he joined the communist party, not theJewish Bund, whose "Yiddishist" views he opposed. Deutscher wrote: "Religion? I am an atheist.Jewish nationalism? I am aninternationalist. 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 ofJewish history; because I should like to do all I can to assure the real, not spurious, security and self-respect of the Jews."[23]
Before World War II, Deutscher opposedZionism as economically retrograde and harmful to the cause of international socialism. But in the aftermath ofthe Holocaust he regretted his pre-war views, lamenting that "If, instead of arguing against Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s, I had urged European Jews to go to Palestine, I might have helped to save some of the lives that were to be extinguished in Hitler's gas chambers." He argued the case for establishingIsrael as a "historic necessity", to provide a home for the surviving Jews of Europe; and said that his anti-Zionism, which "I have, of course, long since abandoned ... was based on a confidence in the European labour movement, or, more broadly, a confidence in European society and civilisation which that society and civilisation have not justified."[24] In the 1960s, he became more critical of Israel for its failure to recognise the dispossession of thePalestinians, and after theSix-Day War of 1967 he demanded that Israel withdraw from theoccupied territories. "Thissix-day wonder", he commented, "the latest, all-too-easy triumph of Israeli arms will be seen one day ... to have been a disaster in the first instance for Israel itself."[25]
Regarding theIsraeli–Palestinian conflict, Deutscher wrote the followingallegory: "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 console 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."[26]
Deutscher wrote the following passages in "The Israeli Arab War, June 1967" (1967):
"Still we must exercise our judgment and must not allow it to be clouded by emotions and memories, however deep or haunting. We should not allow even invocations ofAuschwitz to blackmail us into supporting the wrong cause." (Quoted inProphets Outcast, p. 184, Nation Books, 2004.)
"To justify or condone Israel's wars against theArabs is to render Israel a very bad service indeed and to harm its own long-term interest. Israel's security, let me repeat, was not enhanced by the wars of 1956 and 1967; it was undermined and compromised by them. The 'friends of Israel' have in fact abetted Israel in a ruinous course." (Quoted inProphets Outcast, p. 184, Nation Books, 2004.)
Isaac Deutscher married Tamara Frimer (nee Lebenhaft) in Hampstead, London, in June 1947. Their son Martin was born in 1950.[citation needed]
