“a mysterious mixture of crackpot and genius”

“Harvard’s Pitirim Sorokin, 66, a Russian artisan’s son who became the first professor of sociology at the University of St. Petersburg and later at Harvard. Brash, brilliant young Sorokin ran away from his father at the age of nine (“My father was good man, except when he was drunk”), managed to get himself enough education to enter the University of St. Petersburg. A social revolutionary, he was arrested three times by the Czarist police, served as one of Kerensky’s secretaries, was later arrested three more times by the Communists. Exiled in 1922, he soon came to the U.S., and with the publication of his monumental Social and Cultural Dynamics, a study of the fluctuations of “sensate” and “ideational” cultures, he set the academic world to wondering whether it had found a new Spengler. Today, a mysterious mixture of crackpot and genius, Pitirim Sorokin has his colleagues wondering still.”

— ‘Goodbye, Messrs. Chips,” Time, June 27, 1955, pp. 59-60

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Time magazine, it should be noted, was known and often parodied for its glib, snarky style.

— posted by Roger W. Smith

     February 2019

Author: Roger W. Smith

Roger W. Smith is a writer and independent scholar based in New York City. His experience includes freelance writing and editing, business writing, book reviewing, and the teaching of writing and literature as an adjunct professor at St. John’s University. Mr. Smith's interests include personal essays and opinion pieces; American and world literature; culture, especially books and reading; classical music; current issues that involve social, moral, and philosophical views; and experiences of daily living from a ground level perspective. Sites on WordPress hosted by Mr. Smith include: (1) rogersgleanings.com (a personal site comprised of essays on a wide range of topics) ; (2) rogers-rhetoric.com (covering principles and practices of writing); (3) roger-w-smiths-dreiser.site (devoted to the author Theodore Dreiser); and (4) pitirimsorokin.com (devoted to sociologist and social philosopher Pitirim A. Sorokin). View all posts by Roger W. Smith