Commentary on some of the Russian writings of Pitirim A. Sorokin

Abstract

The roots of Sorokin's sociology are found in his Russian works. Barriers of language and politics however, have prohibited their study by many social scientists and historians. This article is the most systematic effort to compile, translate, and annotate the catalogue of Sorokin's scholarly writings from 1910 to 1922. The recent changes that made this bibliography possible have stimulated a resurgence of Russian respect and interest in Sorokin, and opened new opportunities for research and collaboration. These are explored in the closing section of the article.

Pitirim A Sorokin: The interconnection between his life and scientific work

“…This fact is confirmed by a number of American scientists, who consider that Sorokin developed integralist views from his earliest Russian writings, in particular, in the aforementioned article ‘LN Tolstoy as a philosopher’ and the newspaper column ‘The notes of a sociologist’, and that the integral philosophy and method (i.e. the ‘triple reality’ studied by sociology: personality, society and culture; and the ‘triple epistemology’: rational, empirical and intuitional sources of knowledge) go back to the Russian tradition of intuitivism (Jeffries, 2009; Johnston, 1995: 2–4; 1998: 18–20; 1999a: 25–41; 1999b: 13–24; 2001: 46–50; 2006: 150–6; Johnston et al, 1994: 28–42; Nichols, 1999: 139–55; 2001: 14–15). They emphasize that Sorokin and Tolstoy’s views on the universe, humanity and life are very similar because of their common ethnicity, Russian world-outlook and philosophy, propagating the superiority of senses over rationality and science, assigning the main part to soul, God, love and altruism.…”

“…Tolstoy’s teaching exceeded the habitual bounds of traditional philosophy and flowered into a certain kind of moral philosophy, which attracted Sorokin immensely. He marked out the structure of Tolstoy’s teaching by grounding it in ‘the tradition of four great philosophical problems: the essence of the world; the nature of ego; the problem of cognition and the issue of values’ (Johnston et al, 1994: 31). According to Tolstoy, God is the basis of our existence and love is the way to God.…”