Isaac Deutscher was a Polish historian whose works included Stalin: Biography of a Dictator and a three-volume study of Leon Trotsky: The Prophet Armed, The Prophet Unarmed, and The Prophet Outcast.
Communists who came to the Soviet Union seeking refuge found themselves caught up in the madness of the Stalinist purges. But many, argued Isaac Deutscher, still couldn’t think of breaking with the system that Stalin created and ended up working for their former persecutors.
The Polish Communists were savagely persecuted by Stalin in the 1930s, before he raised their party to power after 1945. Despite attempts at reform, their regime could never transcend its origins as a Soviet satellite state.