Heretics and Renegades and Other Essays

by Isaac Deutscher

Essays, Russian & Soviet Studies, Eastern European Studies

Genres: Essays, History, Politics

228 pages, paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Isaac Deutscher was a Polish-born Jewish Marxist 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.

Reviews

[Rob M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heretics and Renegades is an insightful set of essays and reflections on the Soviet Union from the perspective of the early Cold War. Deutscher was an exiled Polish communist turned British intellectual who combined visceral first hand appreciation of the communist movement with an extraordinary academic mind.

Throw away your piles of books by ex-communists like Orwell and Koestler with their Soviet Oedipal complexes, and work your way through Deutscher instead.

[Agnes Kelemen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was less interesting than I had expected. The essay on ex-Communists is great, but almost all essays are about renegades and heretics of Communism and I expected more on heretics of renegades of religions, mainly of Judaism.

[Susan Webb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting collection of essays written in early 1950s, some dated but some still relevant.

[Kristenmb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deutscher's collection of essays is an interesting read for today because they basically set out all of the major questions the Soviet space will deal with in the years to come (1950's onward).

[RYD · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of essays by Isaac Deutscher, a Marxist historian of the Soviet Union and Communism. This has two of his classics, "The Ex-Communist's Conscience," and "'1984' -- The Mysticism of Cruelty," though I have found them in other books of his as well.