SUMMARY:

Jonathan Daly discusses the historical and philosophical views of Richard Pipes, one of the most prolific and influential historians of Russia in the English-speaking world. One facet of Pipes’s oeuvre is much less widely recognized: throughout his adult life, he devoted considerable efforts to reflecting on the historian’s craft and the philosophy of history. Many of his most consequential ruminations are found in unpublished writings, including correspondence, lecture notes, diary entries, article manuscripts, and the like. Jonathan Daly makes available a selection of such texts for the first time. The introductory essay contextualizes the documents and forms part of the intellectual biography of Richard Pipes that Daly is currently preparing.