Isaac Deutscher facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Isaac Deutscher
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | 3 April 1907 |
| Died | 19 August 1967 (aged 60) |
| Nationality | Polish |
| Citizenship | British (from 1949) |
| Occupation | Historian, biographer |
| Known for | Studies in Soviet history; biographies of Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin |
| Spouse(s) | Tamara Deutscher |
Isaac Deutscher (born April 3, 1907 – died August 19, 1967) was a Polish writer, journalist, and political activist. He moved to the United Kingdom before World War II. He is famous for writing detailed biographies of important historical figures like Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. He also wrote a lot about the Soviet Union. His three-book series about Trotsky was very popular among a group called the New Left in Britain during the 1960s and 1970s.
Contents
Early Life and Political Ideas
Isaac Deutscher was born in a town called Chrzanów in a region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that is now part of southern Poland. His family was Jewish and followed their religion closely. As a child, he was very good at studying the Torah and the Talmud, which are important Jewish texts.
When he was 11, he experienced three pogroms, which were violent attacks against Jewish communities. By the time he was 13, he had lost his religious faith. He became an atheist, meaning he didn't believe in God.
Deutscher first became known as a poet when he was 16. He wrote poems in Polish and Yiddish, exploring Jewish and Polish history and culture. He also translated poems from several languages into Polish.
He studied literature, history, and philosophy at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Later, he moved to Warsaw to study philosophy, economics, and Marxism. Marxism is a way of understanding society, history, and economics, based on the ideas of Karl Marx.
Around 1927, he joined the Communist Party of Poland, which was an illegal political group at the time. He became an editor for their secret newspapers. He also wrote for other Jewish and Marxist magazines. In 1931, he visited the Soviet Union to see how their economy was doing under their first "Five Year Plan," which was a big government plan to develop the country. He was offered jobs as a professor there, but he chose to return to Poland.
Deutscher helped start the first group within the Communist Party of Poland that disagreed with Joseph Stalin's ideas. He warned about the danger of Nazism (a far-right political movement) and wanted communists and socialists to work together against it. Because of his views, he was kicked out of the Communist Party in 1932.
Moving to Britain and Journalism
In April 1939, Isaac Deutscher left Poland and moved to London. He became a reporter for a Polish-Jewish newspaper. This move saved his life, as World War II started soon after, and Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. He never went back to Poland and never saw his family again. In 1949, he became a British citizen.
He taught himself English and started writing for British magazines. He became a regular writer for The Economist, a well-known weekly newspaper, where he became an expert on Soviet issues. He also wrote for The Observer under the pen name "Peregrine." He was part of a group of left-leaning journalists and writers who often met in London.
In 1946–47, he left journalism to focus on writing books. His name later appeared on a list created by the famous writer George Orwell. This list included people Orwell thought had pro-communist sympathies, meaning they shouldn't write for a certain government department.
Historian and Writer
Deutscher published his first major book, Stalin, A Political Biography, in 1949. In this book, he wrote about Stalin's role in building a form of socialism in the Soviet Union. He believed it was a twisted version of the original ideas of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky.
This book made Deutscher a leading expert on Soviet affairs and the Russian Revolution. He then wrote his most ambitious work: a three-book biography of Leon Trotsky. These books were titled The Prophet Armed (1954), The Prophet Unarmed (1959), and The Prophet Outcast (1963). He did a lot of research for these books, even getting special access to Trotsky's private papers.
Deutscher had planned to write a book about Lenin next, but he passed away before he could finish it. He also faced challenges getting a university teaching job because of his strong political views.
In the 1960s, many young people became interested in left-wing politics, especially during the Vietnam War. This made Deutscher a popular speaker at universities in Britain and the United States. He spoke at the first "Teach-In" on Vietnam at the University of California, Berkeley, where he criticized the Cold War. He also gave lectures at the University of Cambridge and other universities in the United States.
Isaac Deutscher died suddenly in Rome in 1967 while there for an Italian TV show. A special award, called the Deutscher Memorial Prize, is given every year to a book that shows the best new writing about Marxist ideas.
Views on Jewish Identity and Zionism
Even though Isaac Deutscher was an atheist, he felt a strong connection to his Jewish heritage. He created the term "non-Jewish Jew" to describe himself and other Jewish humanists who didn't follow traditional religion but still felt a deep connection to Jewish culture and history. He admired historical Jewish figures who challenged traditional ideas.
Deutscher wrote about his Jewish identity: "I am an atheist. I am an internationalist. 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." This means he felt Jewish because he stood with those who were persecuted and felt a connection to Jewish history.
Before World War II, Deutscher was against Zionism, which is the movement to create and support a Jewish state in Israel. He thought it was not good for international socialism. However, after the Holocaust, where millions of Jews were killed, he changed his mind. He regretted his earlier views, saying that if he had encouraged European Jews to go to Palestine, some lives might have been saved. He then supported the creation of Israel as a "historic necessity" to provide a safe home for Jewish survivors.
In the 1960s, he became more critical of Israel. After the Six-Day War in 1967, he asked Israel to withdraw from the territories it had occupied. He believed that this victory would actually be a "disaster" for Israel in the long run.
Deutscher used an allegory (a story with a hidden meaning) to explain the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. He described a man jumping from a burning house, saving himself but accidentally hurting someone below. He said that if both acted wisely, they would help each other. But if they acted without thinking, they would become bitter enemies.
He also wrote that people should not let their emotions or sad memories, even of Auschwitz, stop them from making fair judgments. He believed that supporting Israel's wars against the Arabs was not good for Israel's long-term safety.
Selected Works
- Stalin: a Political Biography (1949)
- Russia After Stalin (1953)
- The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879–1921 (1954)
- The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921–1929 (1959)
- The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky, 1929–1940 (1963)
- The Unfinished Revolution: Russia 1917–1967 (1967)
- Non-Jewish Jew and other essays (1968)
Images for kids
-
Isaac Deutscher
See also
- Deutscher Memorial Prize
In Spanish: Isaac Deutscher para niños
