Isaac Deutscher

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Isaac Deutscher bigraphy, stories - Historians

Isaac Deutscher : biography

3 April 1907 – 19 August 1967

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.Neil Davidson, , International Socialism 104, 2004

Move to UK and journalism (1939–1947)

In April 1939, Deutscher left Poland for London as a correspondent for a Polish-Jewish newspaper for which he had worked as a proof reader for fourteen years. This move saved his life and paved the way for his future career. He never returned to Poland and never saw any of his family again. In London, he worked as a correspondent for the Polish newspaper, and for a while he joined the Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers League.

When Germany occupied Poland in September 1939, and his connection with his newspaper was severed, he taught himself English and began writing for English magazines. He was soon a regular correspondent for the leading weekly The Economist. In 1940 he joined the Polish Army in Scotland, but was interned as a dangerous subversive. Released in 1942, he joined the staff of The Economist and became its expert on Soviet affairs and military issues, and its chief European correspondent. He also wrote for The Observer as a roving European correspondent under the pen-name "Peregrine".

He left journalism in 1946-47 to write books. Deutscher’s name (with the remark "Sympathiser only") subsequently appeared on Orwell’s list, a list of people (many writers and journalists) which George Orwell prepared in March 1949 for the Information Research Department, a propaganda unit set up at the Foreign Office by the Labour government. Orwell considered the listed people to have pro-communist leanings and therefore to be inappropriate to write for the IRD. The New York Review of Books Volume 50, Number 14. September 25, 2003

In relation to Judaism and Zionism

Despite being an atheist and a lifelong socialist, Deutscher emphasised the importance of his Jewish heritage. He coined the expression "non-Jewish Jew" to apply to himself and other Jewish humanists. Deutscher admired Elisha ben Abuyah, a Jewish heretic of the 2nd century CE. But he had little time for specifically Jewish politics. In Warsaw, he joined the Communist Party, not the Jewish Bund, whose "Yiddishist" views he opposed.

His definition of his Jewishness was: "Religion? I am an atheist. Jewish nationalism? 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; because I should like to do all I can to assure the real, not spurious, security and self-respect of the Jews."Deutscher, Isaac. “Who is a Jew?” In The Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays. Tamara Deutscher, ed. and Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. P. 51.

Before World War II, Deutscher opposed Zionism as economically retrograde and harmful to the cause of international socialism, but in the aftermath of the Holocaust he regretted his pre-war views, and argued a case for establishing Israel as a "historic necessity" to provide a home for the surviving Jews of Europe. In the 1960s he became more critical of Israel for its failure to recognize the dispossession of the Palestinians, and after the Six Day War of 1967 he demanded that Israel withdraw from the occupied territories. "This ‘six day wonder’", he commented, "this latest, all-too-easy triumph of Israeli arms will be seen one day… to have been a disaster… for Israel itself."Deutscher, Isaac. An Interview: On the Israeli-Arab War. New Left Review I/44 (July–August 1967): 30-45.

His most famous statement regarding Israel is "A man once jumped from the top floor of a burning house in which many members of his family had already perished. He managed to save his life; but as he was falling he hit a person standing down below and broke that person’s legs and arms. The jumping man had no choice; yet to the man with the broken limbs he was the cause of his misfortune. If both behaved rationally, they would not become enemies. The man who escaped from the blazing house, having recovered, would have tried to help and console the other sufferer; and the latter might have realized that he was the victim of circumstances over which neither of them had control. But look what happens when these people behave irrationally. The injured man blames the other for his misery and swears to make him pay for it. The other, afraid of the crippled man’s revenge, insults him, kicks him, and beats him up whenever they meet. The kicked man again swears revenge and is again punched and punished. The bitter enmity, so fortuitous at first, hardens and comes to overshadow the whole existence of both men and to poison their minds."Deutscher, Isaac. The Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays. London: Oxford University Press, pp 136-137