Richard Pipes

Richard Pipes (2004)

Richard Pipes (born July 11, 1923 in Cieszyn , Poland , † May 17, 2018 in Cambridge , Massachusetts ) was an American historian who specialized in the history of Russia and the Soviet Union . During the Cold War , he headed a panel of external experts called Team B , which analyzed the strategic goals and capacities of the Soviet Union for the CIA .

Life

Richard Pipes came from a family of assimilated Jews. His father was an entrepreneur. His first foreign language was German, and he only learned Russian in the USA. After the German invasion of Poland , his family fled Warsaw via Italy to the United States in October 1939 , avoiding German Jewish persecution, while other family members fell victim to the Holocaust . An uncle was the victim of Stalin's terror in Leningrad in 1940 . This basic experience shaped his life. Pipes was naturalized with the USAAF in 1943 during his military service in World War II . He received his postgraduate education from Muskingum College , Ohio , Harvard University, and Cornell University .

He married Irene Eugenia Roth in 1946. The marriage had two children. His son Daniel Pipes is a Middle East expert and critic of Islam .

Richard Pipes taught at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. In 1965 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . He was the director of the University's Center for Russian Studies from 1968 to 1973 and was a professor of history. Between 1973 and 1978 he served as a consultant to the Stanford University Research Institute . He also served as an advisor to Democratic Senator Henry M. Jackson in the 1970s . In 1981 and 1982, as a member of the National Security Council, he was Director for Eastern European and Soviet Affairs under President Ronald Reagan . A longer period of engagement would have made it impossible for him to return to teaching at Harvard. From 1977 to 1992 he was a member of the Committee on the Present Danger , a leading foreign and armaments interest group. Pipes was also a long-time member of the Council on Foreign Relations .

Pipes stood out as a critic of the détente policy in the 1970s and was therefore not without controversy, as it was important to him to expose the history of the Soviets as "criminal", which was the basis of the "coup d'état" of 1917. However, as early as 1984, a year before Gorbachev, he saw "forces of change" in the Soviet Union. After 9/11 in 2001 he expressed the opinion that "neither Russia nor most of the countries in the Middle East could be democratized".

Fonts (selection)

• Russia before the revolution. State and society in the tsarist empire . Translation by Christian Spiel. CH Beck, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-406-06720-4 ; dtv, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-423-04423-3 .
• The Russian Revolution . 1. The collapse of the tsarist empire . ISBN 3-87134-020-0 ; 2. The power of the Bolsheviks . ISBN 3-87134-025-1 ; 3. Russia under the new regime , ISBN 3-87134-066-9 , Rowohlt, Berlin 1992/93.
• Vixi. Memoirs of a Non-Belonger. Yale University Press, New Haven 2005, ISBN 978-0-300-10965-8 ( autobiography , English).

Web links

• Literature by and about Richard Pipes in the catalog of the German National Library
• Sam Tanenhaus: The hard-liner. Boston Globe , February 11, 2003

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Patrick Bahners : Considerations on the revolution in Russia . Obituary, in: FAZ, May 19, 2018, p. 14
2. ↑ Russia, Soviet Union and back Hansrudolf Kramer in his obituary in Weltwoche 21.18 on page 41. Quotation: The argument (pipes') that Russia has a patrimonial tradition that prevents a democracy from taking root seems quite modern with a view to Putin .