About Richard Pipes
Dr. Richard Pipes arrived in the United States in July 1940. Over the next two-and-a-half years, he was a student at Muskingum College in Ohio before leaving to serve in the U.S. Air Corps during World War II. He finished his undergraduate schooling at Cornell University. He continued his education at Harvard, where he earned a doctorate in history in 1950. Pipes would spend the next 50-plus years at Harvard, where he was professor of Russian history, director of the Russian Research Center, and was principal investigator of the Harvard Project on Cold War Studies. During 1981 and 1982, he served President Reagan as director of Eastern European and Soviet Affairs for the National Security Council. At the NSC, he was the primary author of NSDD-75, which pledged to “contain” and “reverse” Soviet expansionism and to “promote … the process of change in the Soviet Union toward a more pluralistic political and economic system.” He was always well received at Harvard. His classes were large and full. In 1996, he retired from the classroom, though his association with Harvard continues as, among other things, Baird Professor of History Emeritus. Among his most important publications are Russia Under the Old Regime (1974), The Russian Revolution (1990), Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime (1994), The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive (1996) and Communism: A History (2001). Dr. Pipes passed away in May 2018.
EDITOR’S NOTE: On Sept. 27, 2005, Dr. Richard Pipes, the acclaimed Russian historian and Harvard professor of Sovietology, visited Grove City College at the invitation of The Center for Vision & Values to deliver the annual J. Howard Pew Lecture. Pipes … Continue reading
