Richard Edgar Pipes (1923–2018) was a prominent Polish-American historian and foreign policy expert specializing in Russian and Soviet history and the Cold War. Born in Cieszyn, Poland, to a Jewish family, he fled the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, escaping the Holocaust by relocating to the United States via Italy in 1940. Pipes became a U.S. citizen in 1943 while serving in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II and studied Russian at Cornell University as part of intelligence training. He completed his B.A. in Russian Studies at Cornell in 1945 and earned a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University in 1950, where he remained for his entire academic career.

At Harvard, Pipes was the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of History and director of the Russian Research Center before becoming professor emeritus. Known for his hawkish, anti-communist, and anti-Soviet views, he was a leading critic of Soviet totalitarianism. Pipes served as a foreign policy advisor on President Ronald Reagan's National Security Council staff as director of Eastern European and Soviet Affairs from 1981 to 1983. Earlier, he directed the controversial Team B intelligence assessment in 1976, which challenged prevailing U.S. intelligence estimates on Soviet military capabilities and intentions, significantly influencing U.S. policy toward the USSR.

He authored influential works such as "Russia Under the Old Regime" (1974) and "Property and Freedom," and was a frequent commentator in major outlets including The New York Times, Commentary, and The Times Literary Supplement. Pipes's career was marked by controversies, including criticism from Sovietologists for his conservative biases and his interpretation of Russian history as inherently authoritarian. Despite debates over his methodologies, his archival research and predictions about the Soviet Union's collapse were ultimately vindicated. He received numerous accolades, including delivering the Jefferson Lecture in 1990, and continued writing until late in life. He was the father of Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes and died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at age 94.