Who is and what is Richard Pipes writing about?

In the Jewish-Polish family, after the end of the First World War, a famous American historian, a connoisseur of the history of the USSR and Russia, Richard Pipes was born. With the arrival of the fascists, the Pipes fled with great difficulties from occupied Poland and, bypassing many countries, including the black-and-white Italy Mussolini, finally reached the United States, Ohio. Richard Pipes studied there in college and began to serve in the US aviation, which resulted in the acquisition of the citizenship of this country. In the war he received good training as a translator from Russian.

Peace

After the demobilization, Richard Pipes married and graduated from Harvard University, where he studied with the well-known philosopher, historian of European thought Crein Brinton, who proved himself from the best side in modern science and brought up many well-known public and political figures throughout the country.

Pipes was to defend his doctoral dissertation in 1950, then work in his native Harvard University. Already in 1963, Richard Pipes became a professor, in 1968 - director of the Center for Russian Studies at the University of Harvard, and in 1973 he began to work as a principal scientific consultant at the Institute for the Study of Russia at the University of Stevenford.

"Team B"

Team B was very different from "Team A", for the most part the fact that most often it had to serve as a counterbalance in the compilation of state opinions. The "Team A" specialists were specialists of the only one department - analysts of the CIA, while the team, to which Pipes joined in 1976, was staffed by civilian experts and retired military personnel.

Nevertheless, both teams were created by the head of the CIA to assess the threat to the States from the side of the USSR. The director of the CIA at the time was George W. Bush. Since 1981, in the National Security Council, many issues of US policy on the doctrine of Ronald Reagan and engaged in Richard Pipes. Thus, for several decades the State Department remained the main working place of the political writer. It was from the filing of Pipes and his colleagues that the first bricks were removed from the base on which the state of the USSR stood, through the use of specially developed political technologies.

Now

Both before and after the destruction of the USSR, the American political scientist was among many who often visited our country, helping to break it down from about 1958. Now he is in the American Committee dealing with peace in Chechnya, where, he says, it helps to resolve conflicts. In parallel, he continues to explore the history of Russia, and many Russians indignantly read what Richard Pipes is writing about.

His huge articles periodically appear in Russia. In addition, actively cooperating with his well-known opposition and, frankly, wrecking for the country - the School of Political Studies in Moscow, - Richard Pipes constantly flies to the country to read his lectures. Participates in a variety of discussion clubs, gives interviews to Russian and foreign press on the basis of (usually deplorable for us) their activities.

History of Russia through the eyes of Pipes

Richard Pipes, whose books have come out in plenty and almost all are devoted in some way to the history of Russia, completely differently sees the ways of development of our country, he actively dislikes the fact that this way was significantly different from the development trajectories of other countries. He draws parallels in the study of the phenomenon of the October Revolution with the distant past of Russia, tracing the origins of communist ideas there. In his view, medieval Muscovy did not want to have any idea of private property, which radically differentiated it from the rest of Europe. There was only one owner - the Grand Duke.

This alone is ridiculous for everyone, even though more or less familiar with the history of the Russian state. Indeed, the prince could dispose of the treasury, but not the property of his subjects. Pipes incorrectly and too narrowly interprets the word "patrimony". Accusing our princes and kings of legal nihilism, he does not take into account that the country successfully developed, grew in lands, defeated the enemies. The main institutions of feudalism built in Europe, for which Pipes so advocates, did not prevent the shedding of such rivers of blood that our Ivan the Terrible never dreamed of.

"Chronic lawlessness"

The book, which deals with these phenomena, Richard Pipes ("Russia under the old regime"), strangely enough, has become the object of close study in Russian universities and institutes. The slowness and harmfulness of the postulates stated in it show that this is absolutely unacceptable. You can study such books in the academic order only if the students have already received a base of real historical knowledge. To expand my horizons and teach controversy.

Pipes and Russian culture are extremely dissatisfied, and in this book he gives her his negative assessment, blaming precisely the nature of the property that formed it so different from the values of the West.

Philosophers: Russian and American

The choice of the confession in Russia Pipes also considers a huge mistake. But in order to quote our Chaadayev about this issue, we need to delve deeper into the philosophical features of this Russian philosopher. And Richard Pipes ("The Russian Revolution" and other works of his - a direct confirmation of this) - after many - quotes all the same lines where Chaadayev states a break with Western civilization in connection with the Byzantine Empire - aside from the pillars of the Christian civilization.

Here we also recall the blood that Catholicism acquired by other, becoming the main, branches of faith: The Reformation still "drove off." The Byzantine branch of Christianity is far from the most bloodthirsty, without the crusades it cost. Even more controversial is the analysis of Pipes's views on the policies of our Gogol and Pushkin, sometimes provoking astonishment, but more often - laughter.

Amazing similarity

Richard Pipes ("The origins of civil rights" and almost all his other works contain information on this topic) sees a great similarity between the regimes of the Soviet Union and fascist Germany. It repeats itself so often that it becomes like a kind of mantra, under the influence of which the less thinking and the part of the population that is least sensible and lacks life experience.

Quite often, and from different lips, we now have to hear this appalling statement of lies and injustice. These are by no means related regimes: neither domestic nor foreign policy had any common ground at any stage in the existence of the two countries.

How the USSR died

Here it is necessary to see on whose pipe Pipes pours water. Being always the "hawk" of the American establishment, it was he who persuaded Reagan - as an adviser to the CIA and head of the department of the National Security Council - to take the harshest measures to suppress and destroy the USSR. It was he, being an expert in his own interpretation of the history of Russia, assured the US President that the USSR was a colossus with clay feet.

There was a pressure from the US: the support of the mujahideen in Afghanistan and on the territory of Chechnya, the collapse of oil prices and the launch of a propaganda machine with the organization of an extensive network of schools, where they taught the future "young reformers". The network, incidentally, spread to all the capitals of the republics and more or less large regional and regional centers, and in the mid-eighties the main school settled at the level of committees in the government. Five years later the Soviet Union collapsed. Fans of books "Two Ways of Russia" can applaud. Richard Pipes won.

Russia is not to be a superpower?

Pipes believes that even long before its formation, Russia did nothing but dream of this role in the world community. The purpose of statements of this kind is to further humiliate the great country in the public (and not only Western, but also domestic) opinion.

However, Russia's opinion of Pipes is not so important. More important than actions, which can be considered interference in our internal affairs. The geopolitics of our country directly depends on its geographical position, which simply obliges it to be a great power. The longest borders, contact with Europe, the Far, Middle and Middle East - all world crises and any other events of a global scale can not pass without our participation.

Pipes and the Russian intelligentsia

The greatest popularity of the American political scientist was brought by works on pre-revolutionary Russia, about the intelligentsia. It should be noted that the writer was not interested in radicals, but in conservatives, protectors of the existing camp, who defended the monarchy, orthodoxy and autocracy. This part of the Russian population was considered one-sided by Richard Pipes. Property and freedom are two dimensions that make up his worldview, which can not exist in isolation from each other. But what about the peculiarity of the Russian mentality, always based on the lack of coherence? This Pipes is not just not considering, most likely, he does not even suspect about its existence.

But literally, he talks about those ideologues who are still leading in Russia, according to a strange misunderstanding - the republican one. These are liberal economists who modernize the country at the expense of the allegedly backward and nature of a not very intelligent people who do not accept any progressive endeavors. These are the dense nationalists dreaming of medieval ways, these are enlightened functionaries and confessional leaders. Pipes does not consider truly intelligent people , as if they never existed: neither Herzen, Kropotkin, Bakunin, Lopatin, nor Plekhanov were interested in him. But the demonization of the image of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, a man a hundred times higher in flight of philosophical thought than the author considered here, began precisely with the books of Richard Pipes.

Afterword

In the works of Pipes there is an abundance of all kinds of citations and references, where Russian historians draw parallels with Western Europe. But the further the reading continues, the more often the question arises: is the author not mocking us, citing these references in this context? It seems that the texts are made up of stereotypes that have already been developed in the minds of Russian philosophers and writers in every possible lampoon for a variety of bullying even before the beginning of the twentieth century.

At reading it seems that this clever Pipes will laugh already in the next line, saying that he was joking, because it is impossible to believe in the written. But no. Pipes keeps on and on. And it's not funny anymore.