Leonard Schapiro
Leonard Bertram Schapiro (born 22 April 1908, Glasgow - 2 November 1983, London) was a British academic, scholar of Russian politics and right wing operative. He taught for many years at the London School of Economics, where he was Professor of Political Science with Special Reference to Russian Studies.
Born in Glasgow, he was taken back to Russia and spent his childhood in Riga and St. Petersburg, but returned to Britain with his parents in 1920 and completed his education in London.
For many years Schapiro practised as a barrister, and it was not until 1955 that he published his first book -The Origins of the Communist Autocracy - and took up his first academic appointment, at the London School of Economics.
Schapiro's most famous book was The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, first published in 1960 with a revised and expanded edition in 1970.
After his death, some of his scattered articles were collected in the volume Russian Studies (1987).
Adviser to Margaret Thatcher
In early 1980 Schapiro was invited by Margaret Thatcher to lunch at Chequers. Thatcher had been advised by the Foreign Office that the Soviet Union did not pose a serious military threat, so she invited Schapiro and other right-wing experts to take part in a committee offering 'independent' advice. Michael Howard, who was also invited, recalls the following in his memoires:
In the USA a group of hawks formed a well funded Committee on the Present Danger, consisting largely of pupils and associates of Albert Wohlstetter, who urged the breaking off of arms-control negotiations and massive rearmament. Mrs Thatcher was temperamentally inclined to agree with them. The Foreign Office was not. Not surpringly, the Prime Minister sought further options...She asked Hugh [Thomas] to set up a small committee to draft independent recommendations for the conduct of British foreign policy consisting of myself, Leonard Schapiro and Elie Kedourie. Leonard was a leading expert on the Soviet Union, Elie on the Middle East. Both were deeply pessimistic. The Soviets were on the march, thought Leonard, and as determined as ever on world conquest...They believed that the recently concluding Helsinki Accords had been a defeat for the West by 'legitimizing' the Soviet control of Eastern Europe...We put together a totally incoherent docuement which deserved to go straight into the waste paper basket and probably did. [1]
Affiliations
- Information Research Department wrote for them eg in Why Communism Must Fail[2]
- Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies
- Institute for the Study of Conflict
