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Seweryn Bialer (born November 3, 1926, in Berlin, Germany) is an emeritus professor of political science at Columbia University and an expert on the Communist parties of the Soviet Union and Poland. He was the Director of Columbia's Research Institute on International Change.

He joined the underground anti-fascist movement in Lodz, Poland in 1942. Between February 1944 and May 1945 he was a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

From May 1945 to June 1951 he was member of the Polish communist police force (Milicja Obywatelska). He also held various positions in the Polish Communist Party (PZPR). He was a political officer of the State Police in Warsaw and a member of the Central Committee of the Polish Worker's Party. Subsequently, beginning in June 1951, he became a Professor at the Institute of Sociology and political editor of the newspaper Trybuna Ludu. He was also a researcher in economics at the Polish Academy of Sciences. During this time he authored several political science textbooks.

In January, 1956 Bialer defected to West Berlin and gave an almost one-year long interview for RFE/RL in New York, which was broadcast to Poland by the Radio in the same year.

He moved to New York, eventually receiving a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia. He was appointed Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of Political Science. In 1983 he was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship.

In May 1981, after President Reagan at Notre Dame University dismissedcommunism as “a sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pagesare even now being written,” Bialer confidently contradictedReagan in Foreign Affairs: “The Soviet Union is not now nor willit be during the next decade in the throes of a true systemic crisis, for itboasts enormous unused reserves of political and social stability thatsuffice to endure the deepest difficulties.” The Soviet Union collapsed 8years later. [source: David Ramsey Steele, From Marx to Mises (1992)]