Month: March 2019

“Darkness, Despair, Death Grip Russian Educators” (Sorokin on Russian universities, post-Revolution)

 

See the comments posted below. They clear up some items (factual matters and questions) in my original post.

 

Sorokin, ‘Darkness, Despair, Death Grip Russian Educators’

Posted here as a Word document is my transcription of an article by Sorokin:

pg. A2

 

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How this article got published in the USA, or who delivered it, is not known. When it was published, in December 1922, Sorokin was in Czechoslovakia. He emigrated to the USA in November 1923 (not October, as biographies of Sorokin incorrectly state).

— transcribed and posted by Roger W. Smith

     March 2019

 

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A PDF file is below.

Sorokin, ‘Darkness, Despair, Death Grip Russian Educators’ – NY Tribune 12-10-1922

another rare Sorokin photo (1924)

 

Sorokin 1924

 

Early photos of Sorokin are a rarity — particularly, it seems, photos of Sorokin the emigré newly arrived in the USA.

This photo is from the front page of the Minneapolis Daily Star of July 30, 1924.

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

     March 2019

a fervent anti-communist

 

«Мы участвовали, участвуем и будем участвовать в борьбе с коммунистической бандой».

— Сорокин Питирим. Третье письмо другу // Борьба за Россию / La Lutte pour la Russie (Париж). 1929. 9 февраля. №116. С.2–5

 

“We have participated, are participating and will participate in the fight against the communist gang.”

— Pitirim Sorokin. The third letter to a friend // Fight for Russia (Paris). 1929. February 9. №116. pp. 2-5

 

quoted in

Дойков, Юрий

Питирим Сорокин. Миннеаполис. Миннесота. 1924–1930

Архангельск, 2009

стр. 113

 

Yuri Doykov

Pitirim Sorokin: Minneapolis. Minnesota, 1924–1930

Arkhangelsk, 2009

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

      March 2019

another Sorokin quote… ““I would rather have a man of common sense”

 

“I would rather have a man of common sense from the street as a ruler than a high brow social scientist.”

— Pitirim A. Sorokin, quoted in The Hammond Times (Hammond, Indiana), December 30, 1935, pg. 1

 

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Sorokin had a way of making headlines with pungent remarks that showed him to be the eternal gadfly. He often came off as the high-handed scholar showing off his erudition and scorning his contemporaries — he was not infrequently given to writing pompously — while, at the same time, he prided himself on his scorn of academic pomposity and intellectual sterility and his identification with common humanity.

 

— Roger W. Smith

     March 2019

a Sorokin quote

 

“Utopia you cannot make in a day. Russian tried to butter the bread of everyone and found it spread too thin to suit the taste of the people.”

— Pitirim A. Sorokin; quoted in Evening Times, Cumberland, Maryland, April 8, 1943, pg. 4

 

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Sorokin was indeed quotable.

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

     March 2018

a rare Sorokin photograph

 

imageedit_3_6597285211

Minnesota Alumni Weekly, May 4, 1929, pg. 540.jpg

 

Photos of Sorokin during his early academic career are rare.

Here is an item from the Minnesota Alumni Weekly of May 4, 1929 (“Faculty Books,” pg. 540) noting the publication of Sorokin’s Social Mobility. Sorokin was on the faculty of the University of Minnesota at that time.

The photo caption reads: “…. he told us, very proudly, that he is in the process of becoming an American citizen, and he would soon be able to file for his second papers.”

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

     March 2019

“Men cannot be treated like mice and guinea pigs.”

 

Before accepting a position in the sociology department at the University of Minnesota, Pitirim A. Sorokin was a guest of Vassar College, where he gave lectures.

The following article appeared in the Vassar Miscellany News, March 18, 1931: “Scintillating Selz Sends in Successful Solutions”

The article noted that Katherine Selz ’31 was the winner of the college’s Chat Current Events contest.

The prize-winning answers included the following:

 

“Who said:

Q. ‘Men cannot be treated like mice and guinea pigs’?

A. Mr. Sorokin”

 

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This squib provides a revealing glimpse of Sorokin: the provocative lecturer and a sociologist who was firmly against what he called quantophrenia. And insight into what was Sorokin’s humanistic conception of sociology.

 

— posted by Roger W. Smith

      March 2019