Prof. Mirosław Filipowicz: as a Russia researcher, Richard Pipes was an outsider

[Tomasz Siewierski] We live in a time when historical works are aging faster than their authors. 11 July marks the centenary of Richard Pipes’ birth, and the fifth anniversary of his death was in May. His books, on the other hand, both later and early ones, are still in scholarly circulation, being reissued, translated and read by successive generations. Why?

[ Mirosław Filipowicz] When I walked with Professor Pipes in suburban Cambridge he was already of a serious age and needed a moment’s rest every now and then on one of the benches. At one such bench was a ‘cheap book’ stand. Pipes said at the time: ‘you know, Mirek, I come over here every time to see if they have any of mine, but so far there have been none’. So he was aware that books were aging, but also noted that his were somehow aging more slowly. And this is in a way a paradox, because Richard Pipes wrote against the dominant trends of his time.

Methodologically, he was very critical of the French Annales school, which had a huge influence on the way historical writing was done around the world. For him, social history did exist, but he himself was primarily a historian of political history, focusing mainly on political system- and state-related issues.

Richard Pipes was born in Cieszyn, and lived and studied in Warsaw until the outbreak of war. What were the most important Polish themes in his biography?

Both Richard Pipes and his wife Irena were born into Jewish families. His was more associated with the Sanation movement. Marek, Richard’s father, served in the Polish Legions and later remained associated with that milieu even after the First World War. Irene’s family, on the other hand, was further away from politics and closer to business. Until the Nazis gained power, her father headed IG Farben in Eastern Europe. Irena went to the elite Royal Anna Vasa Female Middle School, while Richard attended the Jan Kreczmar Middle School, where he was taught history by the future professor of the University of Warsaw Marian Malowist. Both families left Poland after the outbreak of the Second World War and Richard and Irena met already in the United States.

After the war, Richard Pipes was not particularly interested in Poland and local historical writing. He read Jan Kucharzewski’s famous work Od białego caratu do czerwonego  [From White to Red Tsarism] very late. When he wrote his greatest books on Russian history, Kucharzewski simply did not know him. He was also not well acquainted with Polish historiography. He had a high regard for the writings of Andrzej Nowak, whom he knew well personally. He valued the books of Wojciech Zajączkowski. But I also once saw his weariness when Wiktor Weintraub’s widow showed us her husband’s professorial office full of memorabilia and books. Pipes looked at me with such a telling that-I-still-have-to-endure-this gaze.

He had contact with the Polish historian community from time to time, but these were not deep relationships. He owed them, by the way, to some extent to his wife, who had and has a much greater sense of ties to Poland, to Warsaw, and over the years was also heavily involved in the issue of researching the Polish-Jewish past. Pipes’ contacts with the world of politics were a separate matter. As a Harvard professor, and above all as an adviser to Ronald Reagan, he was interested in the state of communism not only in the USSR but also neighbouring countries. He had already met General Jaruzelski in democratic Poland thanks to Adam Michnik. Incidentally, Jaruzelski did not convince him of his justifications for imposing martial law. But Poland was not his dream country. He came here only when he had a specific reason. He would more often fly to Russia.

How did it happen that a young man coming from Central and Eastern Europe during the Iron Curtain era, so one of rampant McCarthyism in the US, interested in researching Russia’s history, made such a career?

It's true that all migrants from that part of the world were looked upon with distrust in the United States. Pipes found himself in Michael Karpovich’s seminar and with him prepared a dissertation on the formation of Bolshevik Russia, known under the Polish title Czerwone Imperium. Początki Związku Sowieckiego that can be translated as The Red Empire: The Origins of the Soviet Union. This is not only Pipes’ book debut, but also one of his most innovative works. It differs from his subsequent, perhaps more famous and thicker, books in that here he goes beyond capitalist and general thinking about Russia. There, he shows what many decades after him was launched as a paradigm by Andreas Kappeler, namely ‘Russia as a multi-ethnic empire’. Karpovich was a wonderful, uncommonly friendly man who also had an extraordinary magnetism about him. He attracted a group of intellectual giants to his seminar.

This was the milieu that later virtually created American historiography of Russia. Among his students were Marc Raeff, Hans Rogger, Firus Kazemzadeh, Martin Malia or Nicholas Riasanovsky to name just a few, but it was a very interesting and powerful circle. When someone had to take over Karpovich-led Chair at Harvard there was room for only one person. Pipes’ main competitor was Martin Malia, who was supported by Karpovich. However, Pipes won the vote, and Malia got a consolation prize of a professorship at the University of California in Berkeley. This somehow affected their subsequent relationship. When I told Pipes about Malia’s death, he wrote back that although they were competitors, he experienced a feeling of loss.

Pipes’ book debut, which we have already discussed, brought him considerable popularity. Sovietology was very fashionable at the time.

Yes, in fact, any work on the Soviet Union was in great demand back then, and Pipes’ proposal was pioneering. As a young man, however, his interests were less focused. He was interested in everything that we would define as intellectually elegant. He was passionate about art history, literature, painting, music - all these things were very close to his heart. Perhaps at this point it is worth returning to an earlier episode. When the Pipes family fled Poland, they stayed in Nazi Munich, posing as a family of Latin American diplomats. While there, Richard Pipes went to the University of Munich as he wanted to attend lectures, which could have cost him his life. This, however, testifies to his intellectual passion. He was extremely versatile. Before he wrote his PhD dissertation, he collected accounts from refugees in the Soviet empire, and he was also insanely passionate about this.

In what direction did his academic interests develop?

For many years Pipes was fascinated by Peter Struve. Undoubtedly, he was someone very close to him and had a deeper influence on him than we might think. For example: Pipes’ attitude to Ukraine was ambiguous. He would always tell me: ‘Let us not expect Ukraine to join European structures, because Russia will never give it up’. I was a bit puzzled by this and replied: ‘But Professor, after all, you are the honorary consul of Georgia in Boston, so how can you support Georgia and refuse Ukraine?’. And he explained that for Russia Georgia was not as important as the soft underbelly, that is Ukraine. But after all, this type of thought is exactly what we find in Struve, this is his way of looking at Ukraine.

Let us add that Pipes devoted a two-volume biography to Struve, written over many years, which is an excellent book.

Pipes succeeded in one more thing, namely, he published all of Struve’s writings: a huge investment, completely unprofitable, published in a negligible print run, but very significant for Pipes.

Pipes’ flagship works are the trilogy Russia Under the Old Regime, The Russian Revolution and Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime.

Russia Under the Old Regime, the first edition of which was published in 1974 (the first Polish translation came in 1990), is probably the most important in formative terms, because it gives a consistent summary of Russian history. And it is not a bizarre synopsis, such as the one written by George Vernadsky, for example, in an extreme reliance on the Normanist theory.

There is a clear premise in Pipes, which would later return in his book Property and Freedom, which he wrote to give a theoretical framework to his concept of Russian history. His claim is that where there is no property, there is no freedom. This will make Pipes’ view of Russian history different from that of many Polish historians, for example, because he appreciated those rulers who did something for the individual rights of the people.
And that’s why he valued Catherine II very highly in this regard: because of her edict for the nobility and her granting of rights to one group of the Russian population. No Polish historian focuses on this aspect of the reign of Tsarina Catherine II.

In Russia Under the Old Regime, we have a black picture of Russian society. What he writes about the peasants leaves no illusions about their condition. And in this Pipes was quite modern for his time: for example, he analyses the mentality by going back to folk proverbs. This was the direction that Robert Darnton later developed in The Great Cat Massacre.

In his view of Russian history, Pipes may not have been alone, but he was outside the mainstream. How was he received by his contemporaries in American science?

His books were respected, quoted, but he was indeed in opposition to the group that dominated American studies of Russian history, namely the revisionists. The idea was that they mainly showed the social roots of various transformations, not just the ideological aspects and dictatorial ways of exercising power. This was Pipes’ difference with Sheila Fitzpatrick, among others, or with his former Karpovich seminar colleague Leopold Haimson, and very many other historians.

Much as Karl August Wittfogel, a sinologist, former Communist Party activist and author of reflections on Oriental despotism - who included Russia in his bizarre concept - counted on Pipes, the latter was far from enthusiastic about it. He was rather a unique voice, and I think that the translation of the title of his memoirs Vixi. Memoirs of a Non-Belonger as [translated from Polish] I have lived my life. Memoirs of an Independent was somewhat unfortunate. The correct version should be I have survived, and not so much ‘independent’ as not belonging anywhere, non-attached.

What were Pipes’ other research topics?

Another strand of Pipes’ work was the study of certain ideas, and he was particularly interested in conservatism. An example is his book Russian Conservatism and Its Critics, where he claimed the competence of various other experts. The same trend is also represented by his biography of Struve. It was, roughly speaking, the origin of his amusing conflict with Alexander Gerschenkron.

In 1973, there was an incident after the spiteful and conceited Gerschenkron allowed himself to mock Pipes’ achievements as a historian of ideas at a professors’ club meeting. In what Pipes left behind Prof. Sławomir Łukasiewicz found his wonderful letter to Gerschenkron, breaking off their relations yet beginning with ‘Dear Alex’ and ending with ‘sincerely yours’, with the signature ‘Dick’.

Pipes was not only a historian, a professor, but also a state expert. How to evaluate this activity?

The entanglement of American eastern studies with politics and with structures closely tied to the state is a broad topic. Pipes is often accused of having collaborated with intelligence. Of course, yes, no one makes a big secret of this, but where was US intelligence to get better professionals from? On the other hand, the situation at universities and the mood of young people was something else. This definitely broke down in 1968 during the revolt of the time. For Pipes, it meant the destruction of the university, and he was not the only one who reacted this way. The aforementioned Gerschenkron was of a similar opinion, and this was probably the only thing they had in common. In Poland, his ideas were not subject to criticism in recent years, but in the West he was often perceived as a Cold War man, and criticised from that position.

Initially in America, he supported the Democratic Party, but from a certain point on the Republicans became closer to him. As a result, he advised President Ronald Reagan on Russian and Eastern European affairs. This cooperation with Reagan was one of the adventures of his life, although he was aware that he might contribute to the loss of his position at Harvard University. This, incidentally, did not happen. In Poland, thanks to Irena to be honest, his close acquaintances, if not friends, included Adam Michnik, Radoslaw Sikorski and others.

Five years have passed since Pipes’ death. To what extent do his diagnoses on Russia and Eastern Europe correspond with our current reality?

More and more. It is a question of Russian imperialism. Russia has embarked on a path of subjugation of already independent countries, a trend now being reinforced. Today, many say they were wrong, but Pipes, were he alive, would not be surprised and could say ‘I was right’.

Let us summarise: for Pipes, Russia was…

First, a backward country in terms of civilisation. Second, a country in which the sphere of freedom grew incredibly slowly and narrowly. Third, a country that has exerted a powerful influence in world politics - we have a fundamental player that always eludes the standards that prevail in the modern world. This is a country where the rulers have a great deal of power, which is due to the weakness of society. But I will not undertake a TikTok-style summary of his books. However, it is necessary to read these few thick volumes ...



Interviewed by: Tomasz Siewierski

Background photo: Richard Pipes (Warsaw, 2004), public domain.