When he died suddenly in 1967, Isaac Deutscher had completed only the compelling first chapter of a long-anticipated biography of Lenin, published here. It covers Lenin’s family background, birth and early years in the backwater town of Simbirsk up to the execution of his brother, a traumatic formative event. Drawing on a lifetime of background research, including access to the closed section of Trotsky’s archives, Lenin’s Childhood gives a novel interpretation of the earliest influences on Lenin’s personality and thinking. Most of all, it is a glimpse into an unfinished work which would have striven to save Lenin from fanatical anti-revolutionary condemnation and, perhaps more important, from uncritical communist beatification.
This anniversary edition includes an introduction by Deutscher’s biographer, Gonzalo Pozo, which situates the Lenin project within Deutscher’s oeuvre and discusses the sources, influences and evolution of his never completed life of Lenin.
About the author
Gonzalo Pozo teaches Global Political Economy at the Department of Economic History and International Relations in Stockholm University. He is the author of a critical introduction to Isaac Deutscher’s unfinished biography of Lenin (Lenin’s Childhood, Verso, 2024), and his essay on Deutscher’s wartime life in London appeared in the London Review of Books.
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