Adam Ulam
Encyclopedia
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
and political scientist at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
. Ulam was one of the world's foremost authorities on Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
and the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, and author of twenty books and many articles.
Biography
Ulam was born on April 8, 1922 in Lwów (LvivLviv
Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
), then Poland
Second Polish Republic
The Second Polish Republic, Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland refers to Poland between the two world wars; a period in Polish history in which Poland was restored as an independent state. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland , the Polish state was...
now Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
. After graduating from high school, he emigrated to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
on or around August 20, 1939, to go to college. This was but days before the German invasion of Poland which marked the beginning of the Second World War. His father had, at the last minute, changed his departure date from September 3 to August 20, most likely saving his life since Poland was invaded by Germany on September 1. His entire family, save for his brother Stanisław Ulam, a famous mathematician and key contributor to the Manhattan Project
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
, would perish in The Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
. After the United States entered the war, he tried to enlist in the army, but was rejected at first for having "relatives living in enemy territory" and later, after a second attempt, for near-sightedness.
He studied at Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
, taught shortly at University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
, and obtained a Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, where he studied from 1944 to 1947. He became a member of Harvard's faculty in 1947, was awarded tenure
Tenure
Tenure commonly refers to life tenure in a job and specifically to a senior academic's contractual right not to have his or her position terminated without just cause.-19th century:...
in 1954, and enjoyed the title of Gurney Professor of History and Political Science until he became professor emeritus in 1992. He directed the Russian Research Center (1973–1974) and was a research associate for the Center for International Studies, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
(1953–1955). He married in 1963 and had two sons. He died from lung cancer
Lung cancer
Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...
on March 28, 2000, at the age of 77.
Works
He was the author of twenty books and many articles, primarily on the Soviet Union and the Cold WarCold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
(the major exception being Fall of the American University, a critique of U.S. higher education, written in 1972). He is considered one of the most eminent Kremlinologists
Kremlinology
Kremlinology is the study and analysis of Soviet politics and policies based on efforts to understand the inner workings of an opaque central government. The term is named after the Kremlin, the seat of the Russian/Soviet government. Kremlinologist refers to academic, media, and commentary experts...
.
In his first book - Titoism
Titoism
Titoism is a variant of Marxism–Leninism named after Josip Broz Tito, leader of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, primarily used to describe the specific socialist system built in Yugoslavia after its refusal of the 1948 Resolution of the Cominform, when the Communist Party of...
and the Cominform
Cominform
Founded in 1947, Cominform is the common name for what was officially referred to as the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties...
- published in 1952 and based on his Ph.D. thesis, he argued that the Communist focus on certain goals blinded them to the disastrous socioeconomic side effects which could weaken their hold on power.
His Unfinished Revolution (1960) was exploring Marxist thought. The Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
s (1965) quickly became a standard biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
of Lenin, and Stalin: The Man and His Era (1973) did the same for Stalin. The Expansion and Coexistence: The History of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-67 (1968) was likely his most known work. There were two sequels: The Rivals: America and Russia since World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
(1971) and Dangerous Relations: The Soviet Union in World Politics, 1970-1982 (1983).
Several of his remaining books were dedicated to aspects of Russian revolutionary thought. He also wrote a novel, The Kirov
Sergey Kirov
Sergei Mironovich Kirov , born Sergei Mironovich Kostrikov, was a prominent early Bolshevik leader in the Soviet Union. Kirov rose through the Communist Party ranks to become head of the Party organization in Leningrad...
Affair (1988) on the Soviet 1930s. In one of his last books, published in 1992 — the year he retired — Communists: The Story of Power and Lost Illusions, he commented on the fall of the Soviet Union, writing that communists lost because their ideology was misguided and realization of that by the governing elites led to their demoralization, which in turn fed the growing tensions and conflicts within and between Communist states.
List of works
- This is a partial list.
- Bolsheviks: The Intellectual and Political History of the Triumph of Communism in Russia (1965)
- Communists: The Intellectual and Political History of Communism
- Communists: The Story of Power and Lost Illusions, The (1992)
- Dangerous Relations: Soviet Union in World Politics, 1970-82 (1983)
- Expansion and Co-existence, The History of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-67 (1968)
- Fall of the American University (1972)
- History of Soviet Russia
- In the Name of the People
- Ideologies and Illusions: Revolutionary Thought from HerzenAlexander HerzenAleksandr Ivanovich Herzen was a Russian pro-Western writer and thinker known as the "father of Russian socialism", and one of the main fathers of agrarian populism...
to SolzhenitsynAleksandr SolzhenitsynAleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of... - Kirov Affair, The (1988) - note: a novel
- Lenin and the Bolsheviks
- Patterns of Government with Samuel BeerSamuel BeerSamuel Hutchison Beer was an American political scientist who specialized in the government and politics of the United Kingdom. He was a longtime professor at Harvard University and served as president of the Americans for Democratic Action in the early 1960s.-Early life and education:Beer was...
(1958) - Prophets and Conspirators in Prerevolutionary Russia
- Rivals. America and Russia since World War II, The (1971)
- Russia's Failed Revolutions
- Stalin: The Man and His Era (1973)
- Titoism and the Cominform (1952)
- Understanding the Cold War: A Historian's Personal Reflections - note: a memoir
- Unfinished Revolution, The (1960)