People of the Revolution and the USSR

Activity
Any Government and administration 1 Diplomacy and international organization 1 Scholarship and theory 1
Affiliation

Most people

Any United States state institutions 1 Democratic Party (United States) 1

All 2 affiliations

United States

United States state institutions 1 Democratic Party (United States) 1
Position
Any Counter-revolutionary forces 1
Citizenship(set)
Any Poland 55 Soviet Union 32 Germany 2 Russia 2 United Kingdom 2 United States 2 Israel 1
Background(set)
Any United States 128 Russia 7 Germany 3 Armenia 2 China 2 India 2 Poland 2 Ukraine 2 United Kingdom 2 Cuba 1 Czechoslovakia 1 Finland 1 Japan 1 Romania 1
Era
Any

People of the wider world

The Cold War and decolonization1945–현재 1 Scholars of this history1892–현재 1
Citizenship: United States Background: Poland Clear all

Richard Edgar Pipes

Richard Pipes
United States Poland 1923–2018 ○ Natural causes

The Cold War's leading conservative interpreter of Russian history who framed October as a coup

What occurred in October 1917 was a classical modern coup d'état accomplished without mass support... a surreptitious seizure of the nerve centres of the modern state, carried out under false slogans.

Polish-born American historian who became the intellectual architect of the 'totalitarian school' of Soviet studies. His magisterial two-volume history argued that the October Revolution was a coup by a tiny band of power-hungry intellectuals, not a popular uprising, and that Bolshevik rule was repressive and authoritarian from its inception. As head of Team B (1976) and Reagan's NSC Director of Soviet Affairs (1981–82), he translated his scholarship into policy, helping to shape the hard-line turn that many credit with hastening the Soviet collapse.

Career timeline
  • 1958–1996Professor of Russian History, Harvard University
  • 1968–1973Director, Russian Research Center, Harvard
  • 1976Head of Team B, CIA competitive analysis of Soviet strategic capabilities
  • 1981–1982Director of East European and Soviet Affairs, NSC, Reagan administration
  • 1990Published The Russian Revolution
  • 1994Published Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime
  • 1997Published Three Whys of the Russian Revolution

Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski

Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński
United States state institutions Counter-revolutionary forces United States Poland 1928–2017 ○ Natural causes

Carter's National Security Advisor who drew the Soviet Union into the Afghan trap

That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap… The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.

Polish-born American political scientist and strategist, National Security Advisor under President Jimmy Carter (1977–1981). He drove the human-rights campaign against the Soviet Union, normalization with China, and the Camp David Accords, and articulated the Carter Doctrine committing U.S. force to the Persian Gulf. On July 3, 1979, he signed the finding authorizing covert aid to the Afghan mujahideen while warning Carter it could induce Soviet intervention; in 1998 he called it an 'excellent idea' that drew the USSR into 'its Vietnam war,' fueling the debate over whether the U.S. deliberately trapped the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. After the Cold War, his book The Grand Chessboard (1997) championed Eurasian geostrategy and NATO expansion, exerting a lasting influence on American statecraft.

Career timeline
  • 1977–1981National Security Advisor
  • 1973–1976Director, Trilateral Commission
  • 1966–1968Member, Policy Planning Council, State Department
  • 1960–1972Professor, Columbia University; Director, Research Institute on Communist Affairs
  • 1953–1960Professor, Harvard University
  • 1981–2017Professor, Johns Hopkins SAIS; Counselor, CSIS