Pitirim A. Sorokin

Early Years

From: "Sociology of My Mental Life", in: Allen, P.J., ed. Pitirim A. Sorokin in Review. The American Sociological Forum. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1963. Xxii; pp.4-36

 Pitirim Alexandrovitch Sorokin (1889-1968) was born in a very remote part of Northern Russia west of the Ural Mountains, homeland of the Komi people. In the course of his life he survived six imprisonments by the Czarist and Communist governments for political activism, a death sentence, and nearly five years of Red Terror that followed the 1917 October Revolution. He was forced to leave his native country in 1922 and start over again in the United States, where he became a leading American sociologist and in less than 10 years the founder of the Department of Sociology at Harvard University. His studies are characterized by an impressive intellectual sweep and breadth of outlook that have won him a place among history's foremost analysts of social change. Pitirim Sorokin was an outspoken public figure as well, standing against the cold war alongside Albert Einstein and a number of other courageous professionals during that period. Sorokin's books have been translated into over 50 languages; his ideas remain vital, especially in today’s world of cultural, religious, and economic turmoil.

1922.Tambov.Left-to-right: Pitirim, Elena, her half-brother Kolya, Kolya's friend Yura, Mme. Baratinskaya, Dr. Pyotr Baratinsky, and an unidentified medical colleague.

I was born in January 21, 1889, and lived up to the age of eleven among the Komi people, one of the Ugro-Finnish ethnic groups, in the North of Russia. My Russian father was an itinerant "master of gilding, silvering, and ikon-making" (as his guild certificate testified). How and for what reasons he moved from the Russian city Velikiy Ustiug to the Komi region (a distance of more than three hundred miles) and remained there up to his death, I do not know. One of the possible reasons was that among the Komi people he probably found more work than among the Russian population. My mother was a Komi peasant daughter. The only thing I remember about her is the scene of her death—which occurred when I was about three years old. This scene is my earliest memory and it marks my birth into a conscious, remembered life. Of my life before this event I remember nothing. (This personal experience is one of the reasons why I regard various "dianetic" and psychoanalytical theories of an alleged remembrance by the human organism of everything, especially of the birth trauma and various sex experiences, as a mere fancy not supported by any real evidence.)

From my father, relatives, and neighbors I heard that my mother was, though illiterate, a beautiful, intelligent, and very fine person. Of my father I had and still have two different images. In his sober stretch (lasting for weeks and even months) he was a wonderful man, loving and helping his sons in any way he could, friendly to all neighbors, industrious and honest in his work, and to the end of his life faithful to our dead mother. "Christ has risen!" was his habitual way of saying "How do you do?" or "Goodbye." Unfortunately the stretches of soberness alternated with those of drunkenness, sometimes up to the state of delirium tremens. In his drunken state he was a pitiful figure; he could not care for us nor help us; he was depressed, irritable, and, once in a while, somewhat violent in his treatment of us. In one moment of such violence he beat my older brother and, with a hammer blow, he cut my upper lip, which remained slightly misshapen for many years. Immediately after this event my older brother and I decided to separate from our father, and we started our own independent way of earning a living. One year later father died in a distant village. Because of the undeveloped means of communication it was weeks before we learned about his death. Despite father's alcoholism, the image of a sober, tender, and wonderful father overwhelmingly prevailed while we were living together and it still prevails in my memory up to the present time.

Even in his drunken state he had nothing in common with the Freudian image of a tyrant-father, insensitive and cruel to his children. With the exception of the alcoholic periods which were considerably shorter and less frequent than his sober periods, our family—father, older brother, and myself (my younger brother was taken by our aunt and did not live with us)—was a good and harmonious team bound together by warm, mutual love, community of joy and suffering, and by a modestly creative work. This deep mutual attachment continued in my relationship with my older brother and, later on, with my younger one. Each of us was intensely concerned with what was happening to the others; and this devotion and love continued to the end of my brothers' lives (both perished in the struggle with the Communist regime). After our separation from our father, my brother and I moved, earning our living, from village to village for about one year, until we came to a small Russian town, Yarensk (about a thousand population). There we found plenty of work: painting the spire, the domes, and the outside and inside walls of the main cathedral, and silvering and gilding the cathedral's ikons and other cult objects. There, when we were painting the spire of the cathedral we were almost blown down (from the great height of the building) by a sudden storm and were saved from a fatal fall by a strong rope that withstood the assaults of the ferocious squalls.

This town, Yarensk, introduced me to the urban world. I was then about eleven and my brother about fifteen years old. After a few months of successful work in this town, we moved back into the Komi region and for several months continued our work there until, surprisingly for both of us, I found myself enrolled in an advanced grade school, described later on. This enrolment separated me from my brother for the nine months of the school year and, after two years, divided the course of our lives along quite different paths. During these two or three years of our living together my brother's leadership and care were truly vital for my survival and growth. Otherwise we were a real brotherly team, each being "the keeper and guardian of the other." Later on, during the Communist revolution, when the Communists hunted me and put a price on my head, to be captured dead or alive, my younger brother helped me many times at the risk of his own freedom and his very life. My illiterate aunt and her husband likewise most kindly treated me as their own son during my early years when frequently I lived with them in a hamlet, Rymia. Their place was my real "home" when there was no other home. These lines sketch my family background. Among other things they show that I had in my early (and also later) life abundance of a true, pure, and warm love granted to me by my family, relatives, and many others.

“There is no question that Sorokin was a sociological giant, one whose pioneer studies The Sociology of Revolution, Social Mobility, Contemporary Sociological Theories, and of course, Social and Cultural Dynamics, to name just the most obvious provided basic frames for major sociological fields. But although an academic professor, he was also a prophet, one who felt his responsibility to decry certain conditions and behavior patterns of modernity, to warn of their consequences, and to seek or prepare us to go beyond the normative crisis of late modernity”. (Edward A. Tiryakian)

The Overall Doctrine

To Sorokin, the process of human interaction involves three essential elements: human actors as subjects of interaction; meanings, values, and norms that guide human conduct; and material phenomena that are vehicles and conductors for meanings and values to be objectified and incorporated into a sequence of actions. Not unlike Max Weber, Sorokin (except during his early years as an apprentice sociologist) rejected any attempt to study human affairs without reference to norms, meanings, and values. "Stripped of their meaningful aspects, all the phenomena of human interaction become merely bio-physical phenomena and, as such, properly form the subject of the bio-physical sciences.'' Hence, in Sorokin's sociological thought the emphasis is on the importance of cultural factors, that is, of superorganic elements, as determinants of social conduct.

To understand personalities as subjects of interaction, and society as the totality of interacting personalities, one must bear in mind that they rest on a foundation of culture a culture that consists of the totality of meanings, norms, and values possessed by interacting persons and carried by material vehicles, such as ritual objects or works of art, which objectify and convey these meanings.

In analyzing components of social interaction, Sorokin distinguishes between unorganized, organized, and disorganized forms. He discusses various types of legal and moral controls and speaks of solidary, antagonistic, and mixed systems of social interaction, as well as of familistic, compulsory, and mixed (contractual) types of social bonds. Having elaborated these different types of social interaction, Sorokin then proceeds to classify organized groups in terms of their functional and meaningful ties. Here he considers different degrees of intensity of group interaction and the related closeness or slackness of ties between group members. Furthermore, he states that groups may be unibonded, that is, they may be based on one main value, (as is the case, for example, with religious, occupational, or kinship groups), or they may be held together by multiple bonds (as in the case of a nation or a social class). In addition, he states that both unibonded and multibonded groups may be either open or closed.

Specific Contribution to Sociology

From the letter to: Mother Olowienka, Feb 10, 1954

"As to the enumeration of my specific contribution to sociology in brief they are as follows:

1. Systematic theory of social mobility, corroborated by an enormous body of empirical evidence. My monograph on Social Mobility still remains the only existing monograph in the field.
2. Logical and empirical consistent system of sociology as science. It is more systematic in its logical and empirical system than any other so sociological system of the past two or three decades.
3. Logical and empirical system of social and cultural dynamics, or of philosophy of history. This system has already entered the annals of History side by side with tha systems of Spengler, Toynbee, and a few others, as possibly the most significant contribution in this field.
4. Theory of social class, particularly of agricultural class and rural Sociology
5. Discovery, formulation, and confirmation of the law of polarization
6. Discovery, formulation, and confirmation of the law of fluctuation, governmental regimentation, and control.
7. Exhaustive study of the vital, moral, mental, religious, artistic, and other fields of .calamities and catastrophes.
8. A systematic theory of revolution and wars, together with the first empirical investigation of all wars and of the revolutions from the 6th Century B.C. up to the present times. My investigation of revolutions and their dynamics and causes regains still the only existing investigation of all the internal disturbances from the 6th Century B.C. up to the present time*
9. A thorough-going criticism of the fallacies in the existing sociological, psychological and other theories.
10. First attempt at a scientific study of the phenomena of creative love. The enclosed leaflet gives you an idea about this phase of my work. Then in the volumes of my work there are formulated, and possibly discovered, several other uniformities in social and cultural life, but in a short letter these uniformities cannot be enumerated."

Major Writings on...

Social Stratification and Mobility	Social Mobility. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1927; Social and Cultural Mobility. Glencoe, HI.: The Free Press, 1959.
Sociology of Knowledge and Science	Contemporary Sociological Theories. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1928. Sociocultural Causality, Space, Time. Durham, N. C: Duke University Press, 1943. Society, Culture and Personality. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947; New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1962. Fads and Foibles in Modern Sociology and Related Sciences. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1956.
Philosophy of History	Social and Cultural Dynamics. 4 vols.New York: American Book Co., 1937-41; New York: Bedminster Press, 1962. Abridged, one-volume edition. Boston: Porter Sargent, 1957. Crisis of Our Age. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1941. Social Philosophies of an Age of Crisis. Boston: Beacon Press, 1950. New York: Dover Publications, 1963.
Social Change	Social and Cultural Dynamics. 4 vols.New York: American Book Co., 1937-41; New York: Bedminster Press, 1962. Abridged, one-volume edition. Boston: Porter Sargent, 1957. Russia and the United States. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1944. Reconstruction of Humanity. Boston: Beacon Press, 1948. Power and Morality (with Walter A. Lunden). Boston: Porter Sargent, 1959.
War and Revolution	Leaves from a Russian Diary. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. 1924; Boston: Beacon Press, 1950. Sociology of Revolution. Philadelphia and London: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1925. Translations: Man and Society in Calamity. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1942.
Altruism	Altruistic Love: A Study of American Good Neighbors and Christian Saints. Boston: Beacon Press, 1950. Explorations in Altruistic Love and Behavior (symposium). Boston: Beacon Press, 1950. The Ways and Power of Love. Boston: Beacon Press, 1954. Forms and Techniques of Altruistic and Spiritual Growth (symposium). Boston: Beacon Press. 1954.
Public Sociology	Crisis of Our Age. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1941. S. O. S.; The Meaning of Our Crisis. Boston: Beacon Press, 1951. The American Sex Revolution. Boston: Porter Sargent, 1957.
Early Writings	Prestuplenie i kara, podvig i nagrada (Crime and Punishment, Service and Reward). St. Petersburg: isdatelstvo Dolbysheva, 1913. L. N. Tolstoi, kak filosof (Leo Tolstoi as a Philosopher). Moscow: isdatelstvo Posrednik, 1915. Problema sozialnago ravenstva (The Problem of Social Equality). St. Petersburg: isdatelstvo Revoluzionnaia Mysl, 1917. Pracheshnaia Tchelovecheskikh dush (Laundry of Human Souls, science fiction). St. Petersburg: Ejemesiachnyi Journal, 1917. Uchebnik obschetj teorii prava (General Theory of Law). Iaroslavl: isdatelstvo Iaroslavskago Soyuza Koopcrativov: 1919. Obschedostupnuy uchebnik soziologit (Elements of Sociology). Iaroslavl: isdatelstvo Iaroslavskago Soyuza Kooperativov, 1920. Sistema soziologii, 2 vols. (A System of Sociology). St. Petersburg: isdatelstvo Kolos, 1920. Golod kak factor (Hunger as a Factor). St. Petersburg: isdatelstvo Kolos, 1921 (destroyed by the Soviet government). Sovremennoie sostoianie Rossii (Contemporary Situation of Russia). Praga: Kooperativnoie isdatelstvo, 1922. Populamuye ocherki sozialnoi pcdagogiki i politiki (Popular Essays in Social Pedagogics and Politics). Ujgorod: isdanie Komiteta delovodchikov i narodnoprosvetitelnukh rad Pod-karpatskoi Rusi, 1923.