Leaves from a Russian Diary - and Thirty Years After [Enlarged Edition]

by Pitirim A. Sorokin

Overview

The reminiscences of a fiercely anti-Communist Petrograd professor, Pitirim A. Sorokin—from the February Revolution right through to his departure from Russia in September 1922.

This is the enlarged edition published almost 30 years after the first 1924 publication and contains the additional section, “Thirty Years After,” in which the author describes how the Revolution that has since come of age has turned out to be simultaneously “a gigantic success and a colossal failure.”

A fascinating read.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781787204409
Publisher:	Borodino Books
Publication date:	04/07/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	235
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin (4 February [O.S. 21 January] 1889 - 11 February 1968) was a Russian American sociologist born in modern-day Komi Republic of Russia. An academic and political activist, he emigrated from the Soviet Union to the United States in 1923. In 1930, at the age of 40, Sorokin was personally requested by the president of Harvard University to accept a position there. At Harvard, he founded the Department of Sociology. He was a vocal critic of his colleague Talcott Parsons. Sorokin was an ardent opponent of Communism, which he regarded as a “pest of man.” He is best known for his contributions to the social cycle theory.

He was born to a Russian father and Komi mother in the small village of Turja (then in the Yarensk uyezd in the Vologda Governorate, Russian Empire). In the early 1900s, supporting himself as an artisan and clerk, Sorokin attended the Saint Petersburg Imperial University where he earned his graduate degree in criminology and became professor. He was an anti-communist and a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party during the Russian Revolution. During this period, he was a secretary to Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky, who was a leader in the Russian Constituent Assembly. After the October Revolution, Sorokin continued to fight communist leaders, and was arrested by the new regime several times before he was eventually condemned to death by Lenin himself. After six weeks in prison, he was set free and went back to teaching at the University of St. Petersburg.

In 1918, he went on to become the founder of the sociology department at the University of St. Petersburg. In 1922, Sorokin was again arrested and this time exiled by the Soviet Government. He emigrated in 1923 to the United States and was naturalized in 1930. Sorokin was professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota (1924-1930) and at Harvard University (1930-1959).

He died in Winchester, Massachusetts in 1968 at the age of 79.