Leopold Haimson

Leopold Henri Haimson was a historian and professor at Columbia University.

Haimson was born in Brussels in 1927, the son of Russian emigres who had settled in Belgium after die revolution. In 1940, the family fled the Nazi invasion by fishing boat to Normandy, a voyage that brought them dangerously near to the Allied evacuation at Dunkirk; they ultimately found refuge in the United States. In 1943, Haimson gained admission to Harvard University, having lied about his age, as he later admitted. He came late to the study of Russian history, abandoning an earlier interest in the French Revolution. Impressed by the role of the Red Army in the defeat of Nazi Germany, Haimson began studying Russian in 1945 and embarked on his graduate training at Harvard in 1946 as a member of the famous "Karpovich seminar."

Haimson received his PhD from Harvard University in history and social relations in 1952. He was a member of faculty at the University of Chicago from 1956. He joined the faculty at Columbia in 1965 as a professor of Russian history and a member of the Russian Institute. He was the Director of the Interuniversity Project on the History of Menshevik Movement and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He published many books and articles, specializing in the history of Russia, particularly the Mensheviks movement.

Haimson died on December 18, 2010.