The Zyranians are a Finnish people in the north of European Russia who are gradually coming under the influence of Russian culture but still retain to a considerable extent their language and their ancient beliefs and customs. A young Zyranian student, Pitirim Sorokin, who has not yet completed his university course, has just published in Saint Petersburg a thick volume of 456 pages under the title of “Crime and Penalty, Virtue and Reward. A sociological study of the fundamental forms of social conduct and morals.” Professor Maxim Kovalevsky contributes a preface to the book, and it is perhaps less remarkable that a Zyranian at the age of twenty-four years should publish a book of such a size on a subject than that he should find reviewers, on the whole, inclined to be laudatory.
— “Notes on Current Books,” The Russian Review, Volume III, No. 1 (February 1914), pg. 224
— posted by Roger W. Smith
June 2020
*****************************************************
correction:
In a post at
Marina Lomonosova notes that the earliest known works of Sorokin were believed to date back to 1910. As a result of her analysis of bibliographic material, Professor Lomonosova discovered an earlier article by Sorokin: «Кое-что о современной художественной литературе» (Something about Contemporary Fiction), published by him in 1907 in the magazine «Искры» (Sparks).
Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin 