Richard Pipes

Professor Richard Pipes was the Frank B Baird, Jr Professor of History, Emeritus at Harvard University. He graduated from Cornell University in 1945 while on active service with the U.S. Air Force.

After earning a PhD in History from Harvard University in 1950, he was Instructor and Lecturer in History and Literature at Harvard until 1958 when he became the Baird Professor of History, also at Harvard, until he retired in 1996. He also served as Director of the Russian Research Center at Harvard from 1968-1973. In 1976, he was Chairman of the CIA's "Team B" to review Strategic Intelligence Estimates; from 1981-82, he was Director of East European and Soviet Affairs in President Ronald Reagan's National Security Council; and in 1992, he served as Expert Witness in the Russian Constitutional Court's Trial of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Professor Pipes' most important publications include: Formation of the Soviet Union, Russia under the Old Regime, The Russian Revolution, Russia under the Bolshevik Regime,Property and Freedom, and Communism: A History. Professor Pipes received the National Humanities Medal in 2007 and 2009, the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom, the George Louis Beer Prize, and the Brigham-Kanner Prize.