Benjamin I. Schwartz '38, a pioneering scholar who, at the height of the Cold War, first noted the differences between Chinese and Soviet communism, died Sunday night of cancer. He was 82.

Schwartz, a specialist in Chinese history and thought, began teaching at Harvard in 1951. He retired in 1987 as Williams Professor of History and Political Science.

In the 1950s Schwartz was the first to publish a major study--his first book, Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao--that treated Chinese communism as an ideology substantively different from Soviet communism.

It was an unorthodox, even revolutionary thesis, at a time when most scholars assumed that Chinese communism was an outgrowth of the Soviet empire.

During that era, Schwartz also looked at the impact of Western ideas on Chinese thinking and wrote an examination of ancient Chinese thought.

He often challenged fellow East Asian scholars to reconsider their understanding of major issues in Chinese history, said Elizabeth J. Perry, Rosovsky Professor of Government.

For example, she said, Schwartz maintained that the revolution in China in 1949 did not inevitably have to be a communist one.

In addition to institutions, a traditional focus of government studies, Schwartz emphasized peoples and their ideologies in his research.