Isaac Deutscher

This first volume of the trilogy traces Trotsky's political development.

Trotsky, 1879-1921

The Prophet Armed

Classic biography of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, now collected in a single volume

The Life of Leon Trotsky

The Prophet

A Political Biography (Galaxy Books)

Stalin

This third volume of the trilogy is a self-contained narrative of Trotsky's years in exile and of his murder in Mexico in 1940.

Trotsky, 1929-1940

The Prophet Outcast

This second volume of the trilogy is a self-contained account of the great struggle between Stalin and Trotsky that followed the end of the civil war in Russia in 1921 and the death of Lenin.

Trotsky, 1921-1929

The Prophet Unarmed

The Non-Jewish Jew

Isaac Deutscher is widely recognized as one of the foremost political biographers of the twentieth century, and his full-scale studies of Trotsky and Stalin, translated into many world languages, have played a major role in elucidating the character and fate of the Russian Revolution. This collection of essays, hitherto unpublished or out of print, provides a clear idea of the range and force of Deutscher’s literary activity over a period of more than thirty years. It also demonstrates his essential consistency of purpose: from his sharp denunciation of the first Moscow Trial in 1936, through his resistance to the Cold War tides of the fifties, to his sober analysis of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in 1966. His fidelity to the Marxist method and firm grasp of socialist history allowed him to penetrate to the core of events without ever falling into the blind apologetics or feverish disavowals that blighted so many left-wing intellectuals of his generation. Deutscher’s own origins in the Polish communist movement are here reflected in his famous interview on the tragedy of the Polish CP, while his major essay on bureaucracy is one of the few sustained attempts to grapple with this key theoretical and practical problem of the socialist movement. This volume is designed both as a lasting collection of some of Deutscher’s best-known and most powerful texts, and as an introduction for readers approaching his work for the first time. A specially written preface by Perry Anderson assesses this selection in relation to Deutscher’s overall achievement, and Tamara Deutscher’s introduction passes on to the reader the often fascinating personal background to certain of the essays.

Essays from Four Decades

Marxism, Wars and Revolutions

The George Macaulay Trevelyan lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge January-March 1967 - Social structure - Class struggle - The Soviet Union and the Chinese Revolution.

Russia, 1917-1967

The Unfinished Revolution

اليهودي اللايهودي

Hardly any political figure in the 20th century aroused so much passionate and confused controversy as Leon Trotsky. There was a danger that his name might have disappeared from history. Isaac Deutscher's three volume life of Trotsky was originally published in 1954, and was the first book to counter the powerful Stalinist propaganda machine that had sort to expunge Trotsky's name from the annals of the revolution, or worse, to leave it there as a synonym for an arch-traitor.

When he died suddenly in 1967, Isaac Deutscher had completed only the compelling first chapter of a long-anticipated biography of Lenin, published here. It covers Lenin’s family background, birth and early years in the backwater town of Simbirsk up to the execution of his brother, a traumatic formative event. Drawing on a lifetime of background research, including access to the closed section of Trotsky’s archives, Lenin’s Childhood gives a novel interpretation of the earliest influences on Lenin’s personality and thinking. Most of all, it is a glimpse into an unfinished work which would have striven to save Lenin from fanatical anti-revolutionary condemnation and, perhaps more important, from uncritical communist beatification. This anniversary edition includes an introduction by Deutscher's biographer, Gonzalo Pozo, which situates the Lenin project within Deutscher’s oeuvre and discusses the sources, influences and evolution of his never completed life of Lenin.

Lenin's Childhood

Essays on Judaism in the modern world, from philosophy and history to art and politics In these essays Deutscher speaks of the emotional heritage of the European Jew with a calm clear-sightedness. As a historian he writes without religious belief, but with a generous breadth of understanding; as a philosopher he writes of some of the great Jews of Europe: Spinoza, Heine, Marx, Trotsky, Luxemburg, and Freud. He explores the Jewish imagination through the painter Chagall. He writes of the Jews under Stalin and of the “remnants of a race“ after Hitler, as well as of the Zionist ideal, of the establishment of the state of Israel, of the Six-Day War, and of the perils ahead.

And Other Essays

Der bewaffnete Prophet : 1879 - 1921

Trotzki

León Trotsky, uno de los más importantes revolucionarios, en el pensamiento y la acción, del siglo XX, ha sido estigmatizado tanto por algunos de sus antiguos camaradas como por sus enemigos. En este volumen Deutscher acomete con éxito la tarea de restaurar el equilibrio histórico. Traza la evolución de la primera parte de la vida de Trotsky: sus actividades, la formación y cristalización de su idea distintiva y fundamental.

(2a. Edición)

Trotsky, el profeta armado

Classic biography of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, now collected in a single volume. Few political figures of the twentieth century have aroused such intensities of fierce admiration and reactionary fear as Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. His extraordinary life and extensive writings have left an indelible mark on the revolutionary consciousness. Yet there was once a danger that his life and influence would be relegated to the footnotes of history. Published over the course of ten years, beginning in 1954, Deutscher’s magisterial three-volume biography turned back the tide of Stalin’s propaganda, and has since been praised by everyone from Tony Blair to Graham Greene. In this definitive work, now reissued in a single volume, Trotsky’s true stature emerges as the most heroic, and ultimately tragic, character of the Russian Revolution.

Isaac Deutscher

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