Irony and the Heretic

Irony and the Heretic Mohit Sen Ironies of History, Essays in Contemporary Communism by Isaac Deutscher; Oxford University Press; pp 278, 35 s.
IT IS A MEASURE of the quality of the analysis and language of Isaac Deutscher that his death makes one grieve that important events will now pass without his focussing their relevance. Particularly will this be so with developments in the international Commu. nist movement of which he used to be a challenging Marxist critic. The tragedy is that much was on the brink of happening that would have turned the irony of the heretic to something akin to joy. And now he is gone.