What Manner of Change in Russia?

The intense interest which Isaac Deutscher’s recent writings on the Soviet Union have aroused reflects the fact that, adequately or inadequately, he has, almost alone, posed the critical questions which confront serious students of contemporary Soviet power.

A keen historian, he treats the Soviet Union as a changing social system, subject to significant alterations resulting from the forces which it has set in motion. The weakness of most of his critics is that they have attempted to...