In Memoriam of Richard Pipes 1923-17.05.2018 - Russia under the Old Regime (1974), The Russian Revolution (1990), and Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime (1994)

Richard Edgar Pipes (Polish: Ryszard Pipes; July 11, 1923 – May 17, 2018) was a Polish Americanacademic who specialized in Russian history, particularly with respect to the Soviet Union, who espoused a strong anti-communist point of view throughout his career.

Pipes wrote many books on Russian history, including Russia under the Old Regime (1974), The Russian Revolution (1990), and Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime (1994)  - скачать   

Pipes is known for arguing that the origins of the Soviet Union can be traced to the separate path taken by 15th-century Muscovy, in a Russian version of the Sonderweg thesis. In Pipes' opinion, Muscovy differed from every State in Europe in that it had no concept of private property, and that everything was regarded as the property of the Grand Duke/Tsar. In Pipes' view, this separate path undertaken by Russia (possibly under Mongol influence) ensured that Russia would be an autocratic state with values fundamentally dissimilar from those of Western civilization. Pipes argued that this "patrimonialism" of Imperial Russia started to break down when Russian leaders attempted to modernize in the 19th century, without seeking to change the basic "patrimonial" structure of Russian society. In Pipes's opinion, this separate course undertaken by Russia over the centuries made Russia uniquely open to revolution in 1917. Pipes strongly criticized the values of the radical intelligentsia of late Imperial Russia for what he sees as their fanaticism and inability to accept reality. 

Pipes stressed that the Soviet Union was an expansionist, totalitarian state bent on world conquest. He is also notable for the thesis that, contrary to many traditional histories of the USSR at the time, the October Revolution was, rather than a popular general uprising, a coup foisted upon the majority of the Russian population by a tiny segment of the population driven by a select group of intellectuals who subsequently established a one-party dictatorship which was intolerant and repressive from the start, rather than having deviated from an initially benign course. In Pipes's view, the Revolution was a total disaster, as it allowed a small section of the fanatical intelligentsia to carry out policies that were completely unrealistic.