Isaac Deutscher was planning to write a biography of Lenin after he completed the Trotsky trilogy. But he changed his mind and wrote one of Stalin instead. This was necessary, he argued, to show that Stalin is an objective fact. He won the faction fight. We lost. He can't be ignored. the tome on Stalin duly appeared and was respectfully received. Then he began work on Lenin. It was intended as countering the deadening hagiographies produced by Moscow and others. His Lenin would not be a godhead but a revolutionary who committed mistakes like his colleagues. Deutscher died, completing a single chapter, which is this book. A taste of what we lost forever.
