Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 20:05:24 -0600 From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> Reply-To: cbcox at ilstu.edu Subject: The Scholarship of Richard Pipes [Fwd: Re: BHA: Reply to Sean's reply
to me]
Lenin Known and Unknown
The Errors of Richard Pipes: An Abridged List
Lars T. Lih May, 2000
In 1996 Richard Pipes edited a collection of newly released Lenin documents entitled The Unknown Lenin. Many of the Russian texts of the new documents were not then publicly available. In 1999 appeared V. I. Lenin: Neizvestnye dokumenty, a collection prepared by the RTsKhIDNI archive that houses most of the new documents (the principal editors are Iu. N. Amiantov, Iu. A.Akhapkin and V. T. Loginov). Not only does this edition provide the Russian texts for almost all of the documents in The Unknown Lenin but it also gives absolutely necessary background material for interpreting the new material. Besides its many other merits, the new Russian volume makes possible for the first time a genuinely critical scrutiny of the methods used by Richard Pipes.
The main finding of such a scrutiny can be easily summarised: the Pipes volume is chock-full of errors from beginning to end. Some of the errors are small, some of them are crucial, but however we categorise them, we meet them in an unending stream throughout the book.
A full list of these errors would be useful not only for correcting the many new myths put into circulation by Pipes but also for showing the significance of this book and its reception as an event in our scholarly life. In this abridged list I concentrate on document-level errors, that is, errors about the basic meaning of a document. Mere disagreements are not included: the list is restricted to objectively demonstrable errors. Also included are some factual errors that are hard to imagine coming from a truly knowledgeable specialist. I have only reported my conclusions; more detailed back-up will be provided on request.
As readers peruse this list, they might keep in mind the following as aguide to the dimensions of the stream of errors in this book. First, quantitative: the Pipes volume has comparatively little editorial text. A short introduction, plus a paragraph or two for only some of the documents: little more than 35 pages by Pipes himself. The proportion of errors to text is thus correspondingly high. Also keep in mind that the Pipes volumes contains only 113 new Lenin documents (the Russian edition has over 400). Second, qualitative: an idea of the impact of the errors can be obtained by looking at the blurb of the hardback edition, which promises seven sensational new revelations. All of these revelations are severely undercut, to put it mildly, by Pipess errors (for further discussion of this point, see my review for Canadian-American Slavic Studies).
Third, significance. Consider the following: Richard Pipes is Professor Emeritus of Harvard University, our most prestigious university. He was written a number of thick books on the Russian revolutionary period. He had a Harvard graduate student to help him out on his research (of course, this assistant cannot be held in any way responsible for the deficiencies of the final product). The Unknown Lenin is published by Yale University, another institution with a certain amount of status. The book is part of the Annals of Communism, a series whose credentials are guaranteed for us by a distinguished group of scholars listed in the opening pages. The jacket blurb contains compliments from Robert Conquest (^excellently presented) and S. Frederick Starr (^careful scholarship). The book was widely praised by the most influential organs of the mainstream press: New York Review of Books, New Republic, New York Times and tutti quanti. These reviews helped confirm Pipess status among the educated public as the most eminent American scholar on the Lenin era. If the following list of errors is any indication, I think we will have to conclude that the usual gatekeepers of academic standards are not doing their job.
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