The Prophet Unarmed, first published in 1959, is the second volume of Isaac Deutscher’s extraordinary Trotsky trilogy, which the Guardian has said ‘will rank among the great political biographies of our time.’ It is a self-contained account, drawing for the first time on Trotsky’s archives in Harvard, of the great struggle between Stalin and Trotsky that followed the end of the civil war in 1921 and the death of Lenin. From the story of Trotsky’s fierce opposition to Stalin’s policies emerges a dazzling portrait gallery of important Soviet leaders with, at its centre, Trotsky, the man of ideas, the Marxist philosopher and literary critic. The book provides an original assessment of the defeat that led to his expulsion from the Communist Party, his exile, and his banishment from Russia in 1929.

“In the 1930s, Trotsky, with a handful of followers, attempted to block the path of Stalin’s relentless hurricane of betrayal and murder. His epic defence of the soul of the Revolution against its bureaucratic executioners was a torchlight in the storm. In one of the very greatest modern biographies, Isaac Deutscher redeems the legacy of this astonishing revolutionary and humanist thinker.” … Mike Davis

“This is the critical voice the velvet revolution faded out. The republication of Deutscher’s classic trilogy is good news for a new generation who want to know what went wrong with communist-style socialism.” … Sheila Rowbotham

“The three volumes of Deutscher’s life of Trotsky . . . were for me the most exciting reading of the year. Surely this must be counted among the greatest biographies in the English language.” … Graham Greene

“Mr. Deutscher is an exceedingly vivid writer with a sense of style, and a warm understanding sympathy for his hero; this makes him a first rate biographer.” — Times Literary Supplement

“He has told the story more accurately and with fuller detail than ever before. His book is compulsory reading for anyone interested in the history of Soviet Russia and of international communism.” … A.J.P. Taylor, New Statesman

Isaac Deutscher was born in 1907 near Krakow and joined the Polish Communist Party, from which he was expelled in 1932. He then moved to London where he died in 1967. His other books include Stalin and The Unfinished Revolution.
 Publication
December 2003

444 pages

Paper
1 85984 446 4
£15 / US$20 / CAN$29