"A great man is great not because his personal qualities give individual features to great historical events, but because he possesses qualities which make him most capable of serving the great social needs of his time, needs which arose as a result of general and particular causes." So wrote Plekhanov in 1898. Roy was certainly no “great man” even by leftist standards. It is certainly something when leftists who have managed to create a personality cult around mediocre persons such as Stalin and Mao do not do so around Roy.