Roger Smith – Page 5 – Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin

a visit to 8 Cliff Street

On May 24, 2017, on a trip to Massachusetts, I made a stop in Winchester (a town near Cambridge), where Pitirim A. Sorokin, his wife Elena, and their sons lived. Both of Sorokin’s sons graduated from Winchester High School.

I know the area well, having grown up in Cambridge. My father grew up in nearby Arlington. A musician and piano teacher, he had many piano students in Winchester and was involved in musical productions there.

Sorokin and family resided at 8 Cliff Street in Winchester.

I was interested not only to see the residence of a world renowned scholar and writer, but also to see the house because it was famous for its grounds: a garden developed and maintained by Sorokin himself, for which he had won awards from horticultural societies and of which he was proud.

I drove up the block, which was on a steep ascent, using GPS to guide me. The GPS system advised me that I had arrived at my destination, 8 Cliff Street, on my left. I saw 6 Cliff Street, but where was number 8? Number 8 was shrouded and hidden by a profusion of flowering bushes. It reminded me of the Forest of Thorns in “Sleeping Beauty.”

‘Winchester Hillside Aglow with Azaleas’ – Boston Globe 5-23-1954

— posted by Roger W. Smith

February 2024

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Pitirim A. Sorokin residence, 8 Cliff St., Winchester, MA. Photographs by Roger W. Smith

post updated

Sorokin, “The Bard of Life” (Walt Whitman 1819-1892)

Yuri Doykov, ” ‘Modern Thought of P. A. Sorokin”

Yuri Doykov, ‘Modern Thought of P. A. Sorokin’

posted here (PDF above)

Yuri Doykov

” ‘Modern Thought of P. A. Sorokin”

Arkhangelsk, 1995

a few photographs

Nikolai Kondratiev and wife (left); Sorokin and Elena (right); in Minnesota

an early photo

Adolfo Posada, “Ética y sociología de la revolución”; “Sociología y ética de la revolución”; La Nación, 1925 (re Sorokin’s The Sociology of Revolution)

Nov 1 1925

Dec 6, 1925

Posada,’La Lamma Intima’

Posted here (PDFs above)

Adolfo Posada

Ética y sociología de la revolución

La Nación

November 1, 1925

Adolfo Posada

Sociología y ética de la revolución

La Nación

December 6, 1925

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I have transcribed and translated both articles, which are posted here:

the original Spanish

November 1 SPANISH

December 6 SPANISH

English translations by Roger W. Smith

November 1 ENGLISH

December 6 ENGLISH

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Adolfo González-Posada y Biesca (1860-1944) was a Spanish jurist, sociologist, translator, writer and politician linked to regenerationism. He was Professor of Political Law the Universidá Complutense de Madrid

Regenerationism was an intellectual and political movement in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Spain. It sought to make objective and scientific study of the causes of Spain’s decline as a nation and to propose remedies. It is largely seen as distinct from another movement of the same time and place, the Generation of ’98. While both movements shared a similar negative judgment of the course of Spain as a nation in recent times, the regenerationists sought to be objective, documentary, and scientific, while the Generation of ’98 inclined more to the literary, subjective and artistic. (Wikipedia)

La Nación was a Spanish newspaper published in Madrid between 1925 and 1936. During the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, the newspaper was the central organ of the Patriotic Union and also served as the “official” newspaper of the regime. (Wikipedia)

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Acknowledgment:

I wish to thank Lindsay A. Stokalko, Archives Specialist, University Archives and Special Collections, University of Saskatchewan, for procuring this article from the Sorokin archives, and for overseeing photocopying of the document, which presented difficulties. Some Spanish archive presumably has copies of La Nación, but I was unable to find or obtain them anywhere else; and I doubt that Sorokin scholars have seen these articles before.

— posted by Roger W. Smith

September 2023

Sorokin on peace

With considerable effort, I have compiled (Word document above) a compendium of writings by and about Sorokin related to world peace and nuclear disarmament.

— Roger W. Smith

July 2023

National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, “Open Letter to the American People on American-Soviet Friendship”

Corliss Lamont, ‘Open Letter’ (2)

Posted here:

Open Letter to the American People on American-Soviet Friendship

Introduction by Corliss Lamont

New York: The National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, 1943

Sorokin was one of the signers. His Russia and the United States was published in 1944.

Corliss Lamont (1902-1995) was an American socialist and advocate of various left-wing and civil liberties causes. He was Chairman of The National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, which was founded in 1943.

— posted by Roger W. Smith

May 2023

Bolshevik Feminist

from Barbara Evans Clements, Bolshevik Feminist: The Life of Aleksandra Kollontai (Indiana University Press, 1979), pp. 117-118:

Kollontai’s political fortunes rose with those of the Bolsheviks. At the Sixth Party Congress in late July, while she sat in jail, she became the first woman elected to the Central Committee, polling the sixth highest vote. In nominating her a Bolshevik candidate to the Constituent Assembly, Stalin placed her fifth on the list, after Lenin, Zinoviev, Trotsky, and Lunacharskii. When she was released from prison, Proletarii, the party newspaper, welcomed her back by declaring: “Greetings to the fighter, returned to our ranks.” Requests came in to the Petrograd offices for her pamphlets, and colleagues acknowledged her as one of their best orators. Pitirim Sorokin, a Socialist Revolutionary who was later to become an eminent sociologist, wrote after losing a debate with her:

As for this woman, it is plain that her revolutionary enthusiasm is nothing but a gratification of her sexual satyriasis [sic]. In spite of her numerous “husbands,” Kollontai, first the wife of a general, later the mistress of a dozen men, is not yet satiated. She seeks new forms of sexual sadism. I wish she might come under the observation of Freud and other psychiatrists. She would indeed be a rare subject for them. [Pitirim A. Sorokin, Leaves From a Russian Diary (Boston: Beacon Press, 1950), p. 59]

Sorokin’s anger at Kollontai and the Bolsheviks’ admiration for her sprang from the same source—Kollontai’s talent as a speaker. She had never been more effective in presenting Bolshevik demands for “peace, bread, and land” and “all power to the soviets.” Bolshevik popularity was greater than ever before, and Kollontai, buoyed by sympathetic audiences and by her party’s success, rushed happily from meeting to meeting. Her speeches, she felt, “expressed the general striving, the united mass will,” of the crowds who shared her radicalism. The final push by the people toward freedom and community had begun. Both then and later, Kollontai hailed the spontaneity of the revolution. She attributed the party’s success to the fact that it simultaneously expressed the will of the people and led their historically determined march.

— posted by Roger W. Smith

May 2023

Sorokin photo, circa 1925

This photograph appeared in a magazine containing a book review of Sorokin’s Leaves from a Russian Diary.

— posted by Roger W. Smith