29 Facts About Richard Pipes

Richard Edgar Pipes was an American historian who specialized in Russian and Soviet history.

Richard Pipes's writings appear in Commentary, The New York Times, and The Times Literary Supplement.

At Harvard University, Richard Pipes taught large courses on Imperial Russia as well as the Russian Revolution and guided over 80 graduate students to their PhDs.

Richard Pipes was born in Cieszyn, Poland to an assimilated Jewish family.

Richard Pipes's father Marek Pipes was a businessman and a Polish legionnaire during World War I He was a co-owner of the chocolate factory Dea in Cieszyn, before he moved to Warsaw in 1929.

The Richard Pipes family fled occupied Poland in October 1939 and arrived in the United States in July 1940, after seven months passing through Italy.

Richard Pipes became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1943 while serving in the United States Army Air Corps.

Richard Pipes was educated at Muskingum College, Cornell University, and Harvard University.

In October 1944, Richard Pipes was sent to Camp Ritchie, Maryland, to receive training in psychological warfare.

Richard Pipes taught at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1996.

Richard Pipes was the director of Harvard's Russian Research Center from 1968 to 1973 and later Baird Professor Emeritus of History at Harvard University.

Richard Pipes acted as senior consultant at the Stanford Research Institute from 1973 to 1978.

Richard Pipes was a member of the Committee on the Present Danger from 1977 until 1992 and belonged to the Council of Foreign Relations.

Richard Pipes attended two Bilderberg Meetings, at both of which he lectured.

In 1986, Richard Pipes maintained that Team B contributed to creating more realistic defense estimates.

Richard Pipes wrote many books on Russian history, including Russia under the Old Regime, The Russian Revolution, and Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, and was a frequent interviewee in the press on the matters of Soviet history and foreign affairs.

Richard Pipes's writings appear in Commentary, The New York Times, and The Times Literary Supplement.

Richard Pipes is known for arguing that the origins of the Soviet Union can be traced to the separate path taken by 15th-century Muscovy, in a Russian version of the Sonderweg thesis.

Richard Pipes argued that this "patrimonialism" of Imperial Russia started to break down when Russian leaders attempted to modernize in the 19th century, without seeking to change the basic "patrimonial" structure of Russian society.

Richard Pipes stressed that the Soviet Union was an expansionist, totalitarian state bent on world conquest.

In 1992, Richard Pipes served as an expert witness in the Constitutional Court of Russia's trial of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Richard Pipes's writing has provoked discussions in the academic community, for example in The Russian Review among several others.

Richard Pipes had an extensive list of honors, including: Honorary Consul of the Republic of Georgia, Foreign Member of the Polish Academy of Learning, Commander's Cross of Merit of the Republic of Poland, Honorary DHL at Adelphi College, Honorary LLD at Muskingum College, Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Silesia, Szczecin University, and the University of Warsaw.

Richard Pipes was a member of the Board of Advisors of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy.

Richard Pipes served on a number of editorial boards including that of the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence.

In 2010, Richard Pipes received the medal "Bene Merito" awarded by the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Richard Pipes was a member of the advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Richard Pipes married Irene Eugenia Roth in 1946; the couple had two children, Daniel and Steven.

Richard Pipes died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on May 17,2018, at the age of 94.