Vixi : Memoirs of a Non-Belonger

by Richard Pipes

• ISBN13: 9780300101652
• ISBN10: 0300101651
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2003-10-11
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

Sixteen-year-old Richard Pipes escaped from Nazi-occupied Warsaw with his family in October 1939. Their flight took them to the United States by way of Italy, and Pipes went on to earn a college degree, join the U.S. Air Corps, serve as professor of Russian history at Harvard for nearly forty years, and become adviser to President Reagan on Soviet and Eastern European affairs. In this engrossing book, the eminent historian remembers the events of his own remarkable life as well as the unfolding of some of the twentieth century's most extraordinary political events. From his youthful memories of bombs falling on Warsaw to his recollections of the conflicts inside the Reagan administration over American policies toward the USSR, Pipes offers penetrating observations as well as fascinating portraits of such cultural and political figures as Isaiah Berlin, Ronald Reagan, and Alexander Haig. Perhaps most interesting of all, Pipes depicts his evolution as a historian and his understanding of how history is witnessed and how it is recorded.

Author Biography

Richard Pipes is Baird Professor of History, Emeritus, at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Preface	xi
ONE Poland, Italy, America	1	(58)
War	1	(13)
My Origins	14	(7)
Intellectual and Artistic Stirrings	21	(12)
Italy	33	(8)
College	41	(6)
The Army	47	(12)
The Holocaust Strikes
TWO Harvard	59	(66)
Graduate School	59	(4)
Expanding Intellectual Horizons; Isaiah Berlin	63	(8)
Early Scholarship and Teaching	71	(12)
Face to Face with Russia	83	(7)
Professorship	90	(5)
Struve	95	(5)
Edmund Wilson and George Kennan	100	(4)
Western Civilization	104	(3)
Historical "Revisionism"	107	(5)
Russia under the Old Regime	112	(3)
China	115	(5)
Amalrik and Shcharansky	120	(5)
THREE Washington	125	(87)
Detente	125	(7)
Team B	132	(12)
Joining the NSC	144
The Department of State and the Allies	142	(21)
Reagan	163	(5)
The Polish Crisis	168	(16)
Honoring Soviet Dissidents	184	(3)
Lebanon	187	(1)
NSDD 75	188	(14)
The Final Months	202	(6)
Reflections on Government Service	208	(4)
FOUR Back at Harvard	212	(41)
Survival Is Not Enough	212	(4)
A History of the Russian Revolution	216	(9)
The Soviet Union Opens Up: Sakharov	225	(6)
The Soviet Union Betrays the Sovietologists	231	(3)
In Liberated Russia	234	(7)
Reception of The Russian Revolution	241	(4)
The Problem of Property	245	(2)
Retirement	247	(3)
Concluding Thoughts	250	(3)
Notes	253	(4)
Index	257