Prof. Leonard Schapiro, Britain’s most distinguished analyst of Soviet affairs and campaigner for Soviet Jewish emigration, has died here at the age of 75. Born in Glasgow, of Russian Jewish parents, he spent much of his childhood in Riga and St. Petersburg. Educated in London, he became a lawyer in the 1930’s.
During World War II he worked in the War Office and in 1945-46 served as a Major in military intelligence. After the war, Schapiro’s interest in Russian history drew him into academic life. In 1963, he was appointed a professor of Russian politics at the London School of Economics, a chair he held until retiring in 1975.
In retirement, he remained as busy as ever, and took a close interest in the Institute of Jewish Affairs, the research arm of the World Jewish Congress. A few months ago he chaired a conference in London on Soviet Jewry attended by many of the Western world’s most eminent Sovietologists.
Schapiro’s outstanding work, published first in 1960, was “The Communist Party of the Soviet Union.” Revised in 1970, it remains the definitive work on that subject in any language. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences made him an honorary member in 1967.
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