Isaac Deutscher
| Isaac Deutscher | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
3 April 1907 Chrzanów, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (today Poland) |
| Died | 19 August 1967 (aged 60) Rome, Italy |
| Nationality | Polish |
| Occupation | Historian, biographer |
| Known for | Studies in Soviet history; biographies of Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin |
| Spouse(s) | Tamara Deutscher |
Isaac Deutscher (3 April 1907 – 19 August 1967) was a Polish writer, journalist and political activist who moved to the United Kingdom at the outbreak of World War II. He is best known as a biographer of Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin and as a commentator on Soviet affairs. His three-volume biography of Trotsky, in particular, was highly influential among the British New Left.
Deutscher was born in Chrzanów, a town in the Galicia region of Poland, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, into a family of religiously observant Jews. He studied with a Hasidic rebbe and was acclaimed as a prodigy in the study of the Torah and the Talmud. By the time of his bar mitzvah, however, he had lost his faith. He "tested God" by eating non-kosher food at the grave of a tzadik (holy person) on Yom Kippur. When nothing happened, he became an atheist.
Deutscher first attracted notice as a poet, when at 16 he began publishing poems in Polish literary periodicals. His verse, in Yiddish and Polish, concerned Jewish and Polish mysticism, history and mythology, and he attempted to bridge the gulf between Polish and Yiddish culture. He also translated poetry from Hebrew, Latin, German, and Yiddish into Polish.
Deutscher studied literature, history, and philosophy as an extramural student at the Jagellonian University in Kraków. At 18 he left Kraków for Warsaw, where he studied philosophy and economics and became a Marxist. Around 1927, he joined the illegal Communist Party of Poland (KPP) and became the editor of the party's underground press. In 1931, he toured the Soviet Union, 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 line, which saw social democrats as "social fascists", the greatest enemies of the Communist Party. Deutscher published an article called "The Danger of Barbarism over Europe", in which he urged the formation of a united socialist-Communist front against Nazism. Deutscher was expelled from the party for "exaggerat[ing] the danger of Nazism and ... spreading panic in the Communist ranks."
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