Pipes, Richard Edgar
PIPES, RICHARD EDGAR
PIPES, RICHARD EDGAR (1923– ), U.S. historian. Born in Cieszyn, Poland, Pipes migrated in his youth to the United States. He taught Russian history at Harvard, and was appointed professor. He also served as director of Harvard's Russian Research Center (1968–73). From 1974 until 1996 he held the position of Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of History at Harvard. From 1997 he was the Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of History Emeritus at Harvard. Politically conservative, Pipes was included in President Ronald Reagan's U.S. Department of State transition team in 1980. He was the director of the National Security Council's East European and Soviet Affairs team (1981–82) and served as an expert witness in the Russian Constitutional Court's trial against the Communist Party in 1992.
Pipes' principal historical studies concern both Imperial Russia and the Bolshevik period, with special attention to intellectual and national questions. He was a member of the editorial boards of Strategic Review, Orbis, the International Journal of Intelligence and Counter Intelligence, Continuity, Journal of Strategic Studies, East European Jewish Affairs, and Nuova Storia Contemporanea.
His published works include Formation of the Soviet Union (1954), an important contribution to the study of the national question of Soviet Russia. He edited and translated Karamzin's Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia (1959) and Social-Democracy and the St. Petersburg Labor Movement 1885–97 (1963). He edited Russian Intelligentsia (1961) and Revolutionary Russia (1968). Among his other publications are Europe Since 1815 (1970), Soviet Strategy in Europe (1976), U.S.-Soviet Relations in the Era of Detente (1981), Russia Observed (1989), The Russian Revolution (1990), Communism: The Vanished Specter (1993), Russia under the Bolshevik Regime (1994), Three "Whys" of the Russian Revolution (1996), Prosperity and Freedom (1999), and Communism: A Brief History (2001).
His son Daniel Pipes is a writer and commentator on Middle Eastern affairs.
[William Korey /
Rohan Saxena and
Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)]