Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin
Питирим Александрович Сорокин
SR leader imprisoned by both Tsar and Bolsheviks, who became founder of Harvard's sociology department
In an open letter written from the Cheka basement in Veliky Ustyug in 1918 while awaiting execution, Sorokin renounced his SR party membership and declared an end to his political activity.
A leading figure in the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR) during the Russian Revolution, Sorokin served as secretary to Prime Minister Kerensky and was elected to the Constituent Assembly. Imprisoned three times by the Tsarist regime, he was sentenced to death by the Bolsheviks after 1917 and exiled in 1922 on the 'philosophers' ship.' In the United States he founded Harvard's department of sociology in 1930, becoming one of the 20th century's most important sociologists through his work on social stratification, social mobility, and the cyclical theory of sociocultural dynamics in his magnum opus Social and Cultural Dynamics.
Career timeline
- 1906Joined SR party; arrested and imprisoned in Kineshma
- 1909–1914Graduated from St. Petersburg University, Faculty of Law, in criminology
- 1917SR leader, secretary to PM Kerensky, Constituent Assembly deputy
- 1919–1922Professor at Petrograd University; founded Russia's first sociology department
- 1922Exiled from Soviet Russia ('philosophers' ship')
- 1924–1930Professor at University of Minnesota
- 1930–1959Professor at Harvard; founded and chaired sociology department
- 1965President of the American Sociological Association