Leonard Schapiro

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For the American computer scientist, see Leonard Shapiro.
Leonard Schapiro
Leonard Schapiro in the 1970s at the LSE
Born22 April 1908
Glasgow
Died2 November 1983
London
Body discoveredInstitute for the Study of Conflict
CitizenshipBritish
Alma materUniversity College London
OccupationAcademic
Known forHistorian
Board member of
Parent(s)Max Schapiro, Leah Levine

Leonard Bertram Naman Schapiro

CBE (22 April 1908 in Glasgow – 2 November 1983 in London) was the leading British scholar of the origins and development of the Soviet political system. He taught for many years at the London School of Economics
, where he was Professor of Political Science with Special Reference to Russian Studies. Schapiro was best known for his magisterial study, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, though his early work on the rise to power of the Bolshevik Party, The Origins of the Communist Autocracy, was his most intellectually ambitious and innovative contribution to the field of Soviet studies.  Because of his prominence in the field and his insistence on viewing the USSR through a normative lens, Schapiro accumulated his share of detractors, including those who were uncomfortable with his embrace of totalitarianism as a descriptor of Soviet rule and those who alleged that his reputed ties to British intelligence services made him little more than a political propagandist.

Schapiro was of Russian-Jewish background; his father, Max, was the

St. Petersburg, when his father took a position in railway administration.[2]
He returned to Britain with his parents in 1920 and completed his education in
lieutenant-colonel.[3][4] Schapiro's traditional liberalism alienated him from those scholars more sympathetic to the goals, if not the means, of Soviet socialism, such as E. H. Carr
.

A scholar with interests that ranged well beyond political history, Schapiro was the author of an authoritative biography of Ivan Turgenev,

Spring Torrents. After his death, some of his articles on liberalism, Marxism, and literature appeared in the volume Russian Studies.[6]
He had married firstly, in 1943, Isabel de Madariaga, an historian of eighteenth century Russia;[7] following their 1976 divorce, he married editor Roma Thewes.[8]

Books

  • The Origins of the Communist Autocracy, G. Bell and Sons, 1955.
  • The Government and Politics of the Soviet Union, Random House Publishers, 1965, five editions total up to 1977.
    ISBN 9780091055905
  • The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Random House Publishers, 1970.
    ISBN 9780394470146
  • Totalitarianism: Key Concepts in Political Science, The University of Michigan, 1972.
  • The Russian Revolutions of 1917: The Origins of Modern Communism, Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1984.
  • Russian Studies, Viking Penguin, Inc., Publishers, 1987.
    ISBN 978-0670812813

References

  1. ^ Leonard Bertram Schapiro (1908-1983): An Intellectual Memoir, Peter Reddaway, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1984, p. 1
  2. ^ Leonard Bertram Schapiro (1908-1983): An Intellectual Memoir, Peter Reddaway, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1984, pp. 1-2
  3. ^ Leonard Bertram Schapiro (1908-1983): An Intellectual Memoir, Peter Reddaway, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1984, pp. 3-4
  4. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31658. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  5. ^ Leonard Schapiro, Turgenev: His Life and Times, Harvard University Press, 1982
  6. ^ Russian Studies: Leonard Schapiro, ed. Ellen Dahrendorf, Penguin 1986.
  7. ^ Scott, Hamish (2014-07-15). "Isabel de Madariaga obituary". The Guardian.
  8. ^ Leonard Bertram Schapiro (1908-1983): An Intellectual Memoir, Peter Reddaway, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1984, p. 30
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