Pitirim A. Sorokin (1889-1968) was one of the most original,
important, and controversial figures in American sociology. His
spectacular rise from a peasant childhood in Czarist Russia to the
Olympian heights of Harvard University provides an unlikely and
fascinating lens for examining the history of an entire discipline.
And, as Barry Johnston shows, his equally dramatic fall from favor
and unexpected resurrection illuminate both Sorokin's life and the
tempestuous world of academic politics.
An outspoken revolutionary and secretary to Alexander Kerensky,
Sorokin was imprisoned and ordered executed by Lenin, then
reprieved and exiled. During the 1920s, he flourished as a teacher
and scholar at the University of Minnesota, where he published
several pioneering books on the Russian Revolution, social
mobility, sociological theory, and rural sociology. Harvard
president A. Lawrence Lowell was so impressed that he recruited
Sorokin to chair the university's first department of
sociology.
From 1930 to 1944 the department prospered under Sorokin's
leadership, attracting an entire generation of young scholars who
in their own right would have a profound impact on the discipline.
In this period, Sorokin published several volumes of his magnum
opus, Social and Cultural Dynamics, and became embroiled in a
bitter battle with rival Talcott Parsons for control of the
department. Parsons ultimately deposed Sorokin and transformed
sociology into the Department of Social Relations. Sorokin
nevertheless stayed on at Harvard, where he established the Center
for Creative Altruism but otherwise continued to work in relative
obscurity. Finally in 1963, after years in eclipse, Sorokin was
recognized for his accomplishments when he was elected president of
the American Sociological Association.
During a long and distinguished career, Sorokin amassed an
amazingly diverse and substantial body of work, much of which set
the standard for the field. At the same time, he broke with the
conventions of sociology, frequently ridiculing and taunting his
less adventurous colleagues. For his heresy, the flamboyant Sorokin
was condemned and driven to the periphery of a profession anxious
for legitimacy as a science. As a result, Sorokin's ideas have been
consistently ignored and misunderstood for more than a quarter
century.
Based on exhaustive research in Sorokin's papers and the Harvard
archives, as well as interviews with Sorokin's surviving family
members, former students, and colleagues, this biography restores
Sorokin to his rightful place in the pantheon of American
intellectuals.
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