Leopold Henri Haimson (1927 – December 18, 2010) was a Belgian-born American

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

whose work focused on the history of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. For most of his career he taught at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

. Haimson was born in Brussels to Russian émigré parents. In 1940, fleeing the Nazi invasion, the Haimson family escaped first to France and then to the United States, where they would settle. Enrolling at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

at the precocious age of 15 (by his own admission, by lying about his age), he stayed at the same institution until he received his PhD in 1952. He was a member of faculty at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

from 1956. He joined the faculty at Columbia in 1965 as a professor of

Russian history The history of Russia begins with the histories of the East Slavs. The traditional start date of specifically Russian history is the establishment of the Rus' people, Rus' state in the north in the year 862, ruled by Varangians. In 882, Prin ...

and a member of the Russian Institute. He was the Director of the Interuniversity Project on the History of

Menshevik The Mensheviks ('the Minority') were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903. Mensheviks held more moderate and reformist ...

Movement and a Fellow at the

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) is an interdisciplinary research institution at Stanford University designed to advance the frontiers of knowledge about human behavior and society, and contribute to the resoluti ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. He published many books and articles, specializing in the

history of Russia The history of Russia begins with the histories of the East Slavs. The traditional start date of specifically Russian history is the establishment of the Rus' people, Rus' state in the north in the year 862, ruled by Varangians. In 882, Prin ...

, particularly the Mensheviks movement.

Publications

*''The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism'' (Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...

, 1955). *''The Parties and the State: The Evolution of Political Attitudes'' (Bobbs-Merrill, 1960) * ''The making of a workers' revolution: Russian social democracy, 1891–1903'' (

University of Chicago Press The University of Chicago Press is the university press of the University of Chicago, a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It pu ...

, 1967) with Allan K. Wildman * ''The Mensheviks: From the Revolution of 1917 to the Second World War'' (University of Chicago Press, 1974) with

David Dallin David J. Dallin (born David Yulevich Levin, ; 24 May 1889 – February 21, 1962 ) was a Belarusian-American one-time Menshevik leader and later a writer and lecturer on Soviet affairs, who helped Victor Kravchenko defect in the 1940s. Youth Dalli ...

*''The Mensheviks: From the Revolution of 1917 to the Second World War'' (1975) with G. Vakar *''The Politics of Rural Russia, 1905–1914'' (1979) *''The Making of Three Russian Revolutionaries: Voices from the Menshevik Past'' (1987) with Ziva Galili Y Garcia & Richard Wortman * ''Russia's Revolutionary Experience, 1905-1917: Two Essays'' (

Columbia University Press Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's la ...

, 2005) * "The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905-1917 (Part One)" ''Slavic Review'' (1964) 23#4 pp 619–64
in JSTOR
"The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905-1917 (Part Two)." ''Slavic Review'' 24.1 (1965): 1-22
in JSTOR
** "'The Problem of Political and Social Stability in Urban Russia on the Eve of War and Revolution' Revisited." ''Slavic Review'' (2000) pp: 848-875
in JSTOR
* with Charles Tilly. "Strikes, wars, and revolutions in an international perspective." in Tilly, ed., ''Strike Waves in The Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries'' (1989). *''Strikes, Social Conflict, and the First World War: An International Perspective'' * "Lenin's Revolutionary Career Revisited: Some Observations on Recent Discussions." ''Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History'' 5.1 (2004): 55-80.

References

An interview with Leopold Haimson
*Daly, Jonathan, “The Pleiade: Five Scholars Who Founded Russian Historical Studies in America,” ''Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History'' 18, no. 4 (Fall 2017): 785–826. American historians Columbia University faculty Historians of Russia Date of birth unknown 2010 deaths 1927 births Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences fellows {{US-historian-stub