Richard Pipes on Property and Freedom
May 21-23, 2006
Dr. Richard Pipes

Dr. Richard Pipes, the Baird Professor of History, Emeritus, at Harvard University, is considered one of the worlds leading authorities on Russian and Soviet history. He is the author or editor of two dozen books including The Russian Revolution and Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime.

Dr. Pipes will lead participants through the main ideas of his masterful book Property and Freedom. In it the renowned historian recaps the history of private property so as to establish the relationship of private property to civil and political liberty. He argues that this fundamental right, denied fro decades by the communist regime in the CEE countries is essential not only to other basic freedoms but to economic growth as well.

In addition to his academic prominence, Dr. Pipes has extensive experience in government. Beginning 40 years ago as Chairman of the CIA's "Team B" to Review Strategic Intelligence Estimates, he later served as President Reagans National Security Council adviser on Soviet and East European affairs.

In 1992 he was an expert witness in the Russian Constitutional Courts trial against the Communist Party after the fall of the Soviet Union. His voice continues to be heard frequently both on radio and in lecture tours throughout Central and Eastern Europe.

I am leaving Vienna with the even stronger conviction that contemporary democracy needs philosophical and moral justification.

Elizbieta Cizewska, Ph.D. student and lecturer at the University of Warsaw, Poland