Pipes, Richard E.: Files, 1981-1982

National Security Council

Director of East European and Soviet Affairs, February 1981-December 1982, Office of Political Affairs

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Scope and Content Note

The Richard Pipes collection consists of memos, letters, reports, briefing papers, talking points, agendas, statements, option papers, cables, scripts, invitations, telephone memoranda, travel vouchers, lists, and transcripts of speeches. The material is arranged into two series: Subject File and Chronological File, 1981-1982.

Series List

SERIES I: SUBJECT FILE

(3.25 l.ft., Boxes 1-8)

The Subject file consists of memos, letters, reports, briefing papers, talking points, agendas, statements, option papers, cables, scripts, invitations, telephone memoranda, travel vouchers, lists, and transcripts of speeches. The pre-1981 material appears to have been used by Pipes as reference material. This series is arranged alphabetically by subject.

SERIES II: CHRONOLOGICAL FILE

(3.25 l.ft., Boxes 9-16)

The Chronological file consists of memos, letters, reports, briefing papers, talking points, agendas, statements, option papers, cables, scripts, invitations, telephone memoranda, travel vouchers, lists, and transcripts of speeches. This series is arranged chronologically.

Biography

Biography

Richard Edgar Pipes was born in Cieszyn, Poland, in 1923, to an assimilated middle-class Jewish family. He attended a secondary school in Warsaw until he was 16, but after experiencing the siege of Warsaw and living one month under German occupation, his father secured passports for his family and they escaped through Italy to the United States. Richard Pipes went on to study at Cornell University and received a Ph.D. at Harvard University. During World War II, from 1943-1946, Pipes served in the United States Air Force.

Dr. Pipes has been a member of the Harvard University faculty since 1950, serving as instructor in History and Literature (1950-1958), Harvard University Russian Research Center director (1968-1973), and as Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of History (1958-1996).

Pipes has also served as a consultant to Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson in the early 1970s, was a Senior Research Consultant at the Strategic Studies Center from 1973-1978, chaired the Team B Strategic Objectives Panel (a controversial effort to reinterpret CIA intelligence on the Soviet threat) in the mid-1970s, and was a member of the Committee on the Present Danger from 1977-80.

On leave of absence from Harvard, Richard Pipes joined the National Security Council in February 1981, with primary responsibility for the Soviet Union and Eastern European affairs. He served at the NSC for two years, the maximum number of years Harvard allowed.

In 1992, Pipes served as an expert witness in the Russian constitutional Court’s trial against the Communist Party. Since 1997, Dr. Pipes has been the Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of History Emeritus. He continues to write, including most recently, Three “Whys” of the Russian Revolution (1996), Prosperity & Freedom (1999), Land-tenure in Pre-Roman Antiquity and its Political Consequences (2001), Communism: A Brief History (2001), and his autobiography Vixi: Memoirs of a Non-Belonger (2003).

Richard Pipes passed away on May 17, 2018 at the age of 94 in Belmont, Massachusetts.

Record Type

Textual

Last Modified Date

2025-04-15

WHORM Alpha File

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Pipes, Richard E.: Files, 1981-1982

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