Peter Beilharz- History and Transition: Isaac Deutscher (1987) [Trotsky, Trotskyism, Socialism etc.]

From Trotsky, Trotskyism and The Transition to Socialism by Peter Beilharz (1987)

From Deutschers wikipedia
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 of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky.[citation needed]

The Stalin biography made Deutscher a leading authority on Soviet affairs and the Russian Revolution. He followed it up with his most ambitious work, a three-volume biography of Trotsky: The Prophet Armed (1954), The Prophet Unarmed (1959) and The Prophet Outcast (1963). These books were based on detailed research into the Trotsky Archives at Harvard 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, but The 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.[11] 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.[12]

In the 1960s, the upsurge of left-wing sentiment that accompanied the Vietnam 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 the University of California, Berkeley, where thousands of students listened to his indictment of the Cold War.[5] He was G. M. Trevelyan Lecturer at the University of Cambridge for 1966–67 and also lectured for six weeks at the State University of New York.[5] In spring 1967, he guest-lectured at New York University, Princeton, Harvard and Columbia.[5] The G. M. Trevelyan Lectures, under the title The Unfinished Revolution, were published after Deutscher's sudden and unexpected death in Rome in 1967, where he went for an Italian TV broadcast. It was a play about the fall of Trotsky, written and directed by Marco Leto, starring Franco Parenti as Trotsky and Renzo Giovampietro as Stalin. A memorial prize honouring Deutscher, called the Deutscher 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 Deutscher made the distinction between classical Marxism and vulgar Marxism.[13]

Stalin: a
Political Biography (1949); a slightly expanded edition in 1961
Soviet Trade Unions: Their Place in Soviet Labour Policy (1950)
Russia After Stalin (1953), first published as Russia, What Next? (1953)
The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879–1921 (1954)
Heretics and renegades: and other essays (1955)
Russia in transition, and other essays (1957)
"Message of the Non-Jewish Jew" (1958)
The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921–1929 (1959)
Great contest: Russia and the West (1960)
The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky, 1929–1940 (1963)
Ironies of History: Essays on Contemporary Communism (1966)
Isaac Deutscher on the Israeli-Arab War: an interview with the late Isaac Deutscher (1967)
The Unfinished Revolution: Russia 1917–1967 (G. M. Trevelyan lectures) (1967)
Non-Jewish Jew and other essays (London: OUP, 1968)
An Open Letter to Władysław Gomułka and the Central Committee of the Polish Workers Party (1968)
Lenin's Childhood (1970)
Russia, China, and the West 1953–1966 (Edited by Fred Halliday) (1970)
Marxism in our time, (Edited by Tamara Deutscher) (London: Cape, 1972)
Stalin (1983)
Marxism, Wars, and Revolutions: essays from four decades (Edited by Tamara Deutscher) (1984)
The Great Purges. (Oxford : Blackwell, 1984)

#isaacdeutscher #peterbeilharz #trotsky #trostkyism #stalinism #sovietunion #marx #marxism #socialism #communism #russianrevolution