Haimson, Leopold H.

Leopold Henri Haimson (1927 – December 18, 2010) was a Belgian-born American historian whose work focused on the history of the Soviet Union. For most of his career he taught at Columbia University . Haimson was born in Brussels to Russian émigré parents. In 1940, fleeing the Nazi invasion, the Haimson family escaped first to France and then to the United States, where they would settle. Enrolling at Harvard University at the precocious age of 15 (by his own admission, by lying about his age), he stayed at the same institution until he received his PhD 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.