Richard Pipes

Richard Edgar Pipes (Yiddish: ריכארד פּיִפּעץ Rikhard Pipets; Polish: Ryszard Pipes; July 11, 1923 – May 17, 2018) was an American academic, who specialized in Russian and Soviet history, and wrote many books on these topics, including Russia under the Old Regime (1974), The Russian Revolution (1990), and Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime (1994). Pipes was a frequent interviewee in the press on the matters of Soviet history and foreign affairs. His writings also appear in Commentary, The New York Times, and The Times Literary Supplement. At Harvard, he taught large courses on Imperial Russia as well as the Russian Revolution and guided over 80 graduate students to their PhDs. In 1976, he headed Team B, a team of analysts organized by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who analyzed the strategic capacities and goals of the Soviet military and political leadership. Pipes is the father of American historian Daniel Pipes.Pipes was born to a Jewish family in Cieszyn, Poland, which fled the country as refugees after it was invaded by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Settling in the United States in 1940, he became a naturalized citizen in 1943 while serving in the United States Army Air Corps. From 1958 to 1996, Pipes was a professor at Harvard University.