Biografier / Biographies & Sites
Articles by Isaac Deutscher
American Socialist
Message of the non-jewish Jew (September 1958)
“By virtue of his special environment and social position, the ‘non-Jewish Jew’ from Spinoza to Freud has often made important contributions to science, culture, politics.”
Lenin’s last dilemma (April 1959)
“Face to face with a moral crisis brought on by the growth of a super-state which often failed to respond to his efforts to guide it, Lenin expressed his dismay in words ‘the like of which had hardly ever been uttered by any ruler’.”
Deutscher Price Site
Marxism in our time (1965)
“Since the beginning of my adult life (that is, over forty years ago), I have been a Marxist, and I have never for a moment hesitated in my – I wouldn’t say allegiance because it is not a matter of ‘allegiance’ – I have never hesitated in my Marxist Weltanschauung. I cannot think otherwise than in Marxist terms. Kill me, I cannot do it. I may try; I just cannot. Marxism has become part of my existence.”
Socialist Register
The tragedy of the Polish Communist Party (1982, p.125-161)
“An interview from 1957 when K.S. Karol asked Isaac for a brief outline of the history of Communism in Poland … Isaac was himself a former member of the party – expelled in 1932.”
Roots of bureaucracy (1969, s.9-21)
“At the beginning of 1960 Isaac Deutscher gave three lectures on the subject of bureacracy to a graduate seminar at the London School of Economics. The following text is a shortened version of these lectures edited by Tamara Deutscher.”
Ideological trends in the USSR (1968, p.9-21)
“This is the text of a lecture delivered by Isaac Deutscher on April 8, 1967, at a conference on ‘The Soviet Union, 1917-1967’ at the State University of New York, Binghampton.”
The failure of Krushchevism (1965, p.11-29)
“Khrushchevism was devoid of any creative aspiration; whenever Khrushchev himself voiced any of the familiar and elementary purposes of socialism, he invariably produced a vulgar parody (a ‘goulash Communism’) … Yet Khrushchev, the epigone of Stalinism, was almost completely overshadowed by the popular image of the champion and hero of de-Stalinization.”
Maoism: its origins, background, and outlook (1964, p.11-37)
“The reliability and effectiveness of the Chinese call for a restoration of pristine Leninism would be far greater if Maoism did not seek to rescue the myths of Stalinism from the discredit into which they have deservedly fallen …The obeisance Mao paid to the living Stalin compels him to pay obeisance to the dead as well. Maoism’s affinity with Stalinism lies precisely in this need to uphold established cults and magic rituals designed to impress primitive and illiterate minds.”
Universities & Left Review
Russia in transition (pdf) (Vol.1, No.1, Spring 1957)
“It is as a result of developments within the Soviet society that Stalinism is breaking down and dissolving; and it is the Stalinists themselves who are the subverters of their own orthodoxy.”
The wandering Jew as a thinker and revolutionary (pdf) (Vol.1, No.4, Summer 1958)
“This article is based on a paper read before a large audience for the Jewish Book Week, in February 1958, under the title The Non-Jewish Jew in Modern European Thought. It has produced world-wide controversy, and is published here for the first time in its complete form.”
