Historian Richard Pipes dies

Polish and American historian Richard Pipes, who specialized in Russian history, died in the United States at the age of 94. This was reported on the Harvard University website.

Program Director of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett I am sad to announce that Richard Pipes (1923-2018) has passed away. He lived a long and productive life. Blessed be his memory (English).

Born in Poland, Professor Pipes fled the Nazis to the United States in 1940. He served in the US Air Force, where he learned Russian, and entered Harvard in 1946, where he remained until his retirement in 1996.
Harvard University

Richard Pipes studied the history of Russia and was one of the most famous foreign experts on the history of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. He wrote, in particular, the classic book “The Russian Revolution”. You can read more about the book in Galina Yuzefovich’s book review .
In addition to his academic work and education, Pipes was a member of Team B, created by the US authorities in 1976 to assess the threat from the Soviet Union at the same time as the CIA. In the early 1980s, he was an adviser to US President Ronald Reagan.