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BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 69-3-12
TITLE:             Leonard Schapiro Dies: The Grand Old Man of Communist Studies
BY:                Kusin
DATE:              1983-11-4
COUNTRY:           Soviet Union
ORIGINAL SUBJECT:  RAD

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WORLD -- LEONARD SCHAPIRO DIES: THE GRAND OLD MAN OF COMMUNIST STUDIES	F-588
Munich, 4 November 1983 (RAD/Kusin)

Leonard Schapiro, Professor Emeritus and Honorary Fellow of the
London School of Economics and Political Science, died on
2 November 1983 at the age of 75. His contribution to the study and
analysis of communism, above all its history in the Soviet Union, as
well as to the teaching of the subject at an influential British
academic institution, cannot be overestimated. Schapiro was not just
one in a long sequence of Western academics concerned with communism;
he stands out as an intellectual force with an impact on several
generations of students and dons alike.

Born in Scotland in 1908 into a family of Russian-Jewish
background, Leonard Schapiro spent much of his childhood in Riga and
St. Petersburg-Petrograd before making London the place of his
creative life. A practicing lawyer (he was called to the bar in 1932),
he rendered valuable service to the British Broadcasting Corporation
and the War Office during the Second World War. His knowledge of
Russian and other languages was an advantage, but he still returned
to his barrister's desk in 1946. His first articles concerned Soviet
behavior on the international scene, especially with regard to the
international legal order as it was taking shape in the wake of the
war. Schapiro joined the LSE as a member of the Department of
Politics in 1955 and stayed there until his retirement in 1975, most
of the time (since 1963) as Professor of Political Science with
special reference to Russia.

Four books among his large output are generally considered of
seminal significance. The Origins of Communist Autocracy (1955;
second edition 1976) is a penetrating study of the coup that brought
the Bolsheviks to power in 1917, a story -- as he himself put it --
of men who kept others from sharing power with them and of the
consequences for themselves and their rivals. Schapiro's political
history of The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1960; second edition
1970) has not been surpassed to date. It has been described as "the
fullest and most influential treatment of the subject in any Western
language," and many have acquired or sharpened their understanding
of the tortuous and tortured progress of Soviet communist history
from Schapiro's excellent study. Schapiro the historian of events
became the historian of ideas in a book on Rationalism and Nationalism
in Russian Nineteenth Century Political Thought (1967) based on a
series of lectures at Yale University in 1965. His outstanding
qualities as a political scientist were demonstrated in a textbook of
The Government and Politics of the Soviet Union (1965; with a number
of subsequent new editions and reprints), a model piece of scholarly
work and perception compressed into lucid form. He wrote, of course,
much more in the way of articles, contributions to symposiums, and
conference papers. His short book on Totalitarianism (1972) as a
concept and as a real and inhuman phenomenon that swamps the life of
individuals and nations has been accepted by advocates and opponents of
the notion of political totality alike. Schapiro's great love
outside the realm of political science and history was Ivan Sergeevich
Turgenev, whose Spring Torrents (1972) he translated into English and
whose affectionate and yet scholarly biography he had published four
years ago (Turgenev: His Life and Times, 1979).

PTO

[page 2]

WORLD (1 ) -- LEONARD SCHAPIRO DIES: THE GRAND OLD MAN OF COMMUNIST STUDIES	F-589

Methodologically, Leonard Schapiro was a traditionalist. He
could not and would not accept that strand in Western political
study of the Soviet Union that sees communism on a par with other
systems of government, lending themselves easily to abstract comparisons.
Neither was he a friend of the pseudomodern introduction of natural
science and mathematical methods into research on communism. The
communist system, for Leonard Schapiro, was a phenomenon sui generis
that had to be approached with a wide background knowledge of
Russian history and of the political profile of the rest of the world,
but could not be reduced to just one of several possible forms of human
organization. A value-free science of human action was, according to
Schapiro, both theoretically mistaken and morally irresponsible. He
saw human beings suffering, not just the cold contours of societal
organization picked out for laboratory-type dissection. His
preoccupation with power, authority, and the run of history did not make him
blind to the destiny of man. As his friend and colleague Harry Rigby
wrote in a festschrift for Schapiro's 70th birthday:

Schapiro has shown what superb results can still be
attained through the traditional virtues of careful
and exhaustive study of the facts, precision of
thought and language, objectivity of analysis, which
by no means excludes the exercise of moral judgment,
and the marriage of common sense with Verstehen in
the Weberian sense.

We in Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty have a special reason
to remember Leonard Schapiro fondly and with gratitude. Right from
the creation of our services he has exercised an influence on the
intellectual formation of our attitudes. He came to Munich often to
give talks, lectures, and interviews. His series of discourses on
the origins of Bolshevism, delivered in our stations with exemplary
intellectual moderation in the 1960s, still constitutes a substantial
backbone of our understanding of the communist system's determinants.
Leonard Schapiro completed the manuscript of another book not long
before his death, which will be published in the United States and
Britain next spring. It is entitled 1917: The Russian Revolutions
and the Origins of Present-Day Communism. RFE-RL is privileged to
be able to plan, with the consent of Leonard Schapiro given while the
book was still being written, a serialization of excerpts from this
book for the near future.

Leonard Schapiro, the man and the scholar, will no doubt
continue to influence Soviet and East European studies through the
towering presence of his intellect and deep perceptions, despite his
departure.

(cont.)

More

WORLD (2) -- LEONARD SCHAPIRO DIES: THE GRAND OLD MAN OF COMUNIST STUDIES	F-590

Leonardo Schapiro, "Some Reflections on Lenin, Stalin, and Russia,"
an epilogue to G. R. Urbaned., Stalinism; Its Impact on Russia
and the World (London: Maurice Temple Smith, 1982).
 
EXTRACTS

One of the most deplorable aspects of the critical literature on Stalin,
both by Russians and by non-Russians, is its portrayal of Stalin as the
supreme villain on one side, and everyone else as his innocent victims on
the other. For, if ever there was a case in history where all are in some
degree to blame, this is it. And not only are those guilty who put Stalin in
office, and supported him there--whether for fear of being swept from
power, from personal ambition or from hatred of some potential rival.
They also are to blame for Stalin who put Lenin in power--and this
includes not only the Bolsheviks, but the socialists who half-supported
the Bolsheviks by not opposing them in time, and the peasant and soldier
masses who backed the Bolsheviks not for motives of idealism, but in
order as they thought to grab more land, or scuttle out of the war, It is only
in the recognition of this guilt that any hope lies for the transformation of
Russian society--if there is any hope for such a development.

But if there is any prospect of improvement it certainly does not lie in
violent overthrow of the present regime, which would unleash a
Bacchanalia of vengeance which could well be worse than 'Stalinism'.
Nor is it to be hoped for in disintegration and collapse of the present
system, which would almost certainly lead to another form of autocracy,
as bad as, if not worse than, the tyrannies of the past. Above all, it does
not lie in any all-embracing, all-resolving doctrine or ideology. Herzen
foresaw that Russia would one day be faced by Dzhengis Khan with the
telegraph. It turned out to be much worse--Dzhengis Khan with a
doctrine. The lesson of 'Stalinism' is that the Soviet people must be cured
of the faith in some universal panacea or some all-powerful Saviour,
which has been characteristic of the Russian radical movement since its
inception.

There are occasional voices raised in 'Uncensored Russia' (as Peter
Reddaway called it) which suggest that some, at any rate, are beginning to
realise this, as the following passage, which reached the West in 1968,
indicates:

Then what is important? It sounds banal. Self-improvement. Individual
effort. Study and thought for one's own moral development. The
classical liberal virtues. Being honest and loyal and kind to the ten
people closest to me rather than professing my good intentions to
world history or social movements. And for the country as a whole,
tinkering with the economic and social system in small daily ways and
stopping to measure what works. Measuring real wages instead of
mouthing Marxist slogans. Measuring real freedom and well-being
instead of talking about class struggles and "socialist' freedom. In
other words, pragmatism. And an end to Marxism, and all other 'isms'
We used to assume socialism by itself would produce a better
society and better human beings. . .But this obviously isn't true.
Socialism alone doesn't make good men, good buildings, good
anything. And certainly not good will.

The lesson of 'Leninism' and 'Stalinism' has never been put more dearly.

-end-

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