Leonard Bertram Naman Schapiro CBE (22 April 1908 – 2 November 1983) was a British scholar of the origins and development of the Soviet political system.

He taught for many years at the London School of Economics, where he was Professor of Political Science with Special Reference to Russian Studies.

Because of his prominence in the field and his insistence on viewing the USSR through a normative lens, Schapiro accumulated his share of detractors, including those who were uncomfortable with his embrace of totalitarianism as a descriptor of Soviet rule and those who alleged that his reputed ties to British intelligence services made him little more than a political propagandist.

Schapiro was of Russian-Jewish background; his father, Max, was the University of Glasgow-educated son of a wealthy businessman who owned a timber mill and forests outside Riga, Latvia; his mother, Leah, was a Polish rabbi's daughter.

's Monitoring Service in 1940; in 1942 he joined the General Staff at the War Office, and from 1945 to 1946 served in the Intelligence Division of the German Control Command, reaching the rank of lieutenant-colonel.