UDC

94(47)08:316.2

DOI

10.17238/issn2227-6564.2019.6.42

Authors

Vera S. Rusanova
Syktyvkar State University named after Pitirim Sorokin; ul. Kataeva 9, Syktyvkar, 167001, Respublika Komi, Russian Federation;
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9842-9184 e-mail: vera.petrashun@yandex.ru

Abstract

This paper aimed to review the scientific literature in which Soviet/Russian scholars resolved the question of the Russian-born American sociologist Pitirim A. Sorokin’s role in the Russian revolutions of 1917 and their influence on his scientific worldview. The author highlights the stages of development of Soviet/Russian historiography on these issues and identifies peculiarities of each of the five periods. The study concludes that in the historical literature there is a consensus about the influence of the February and October revolutions on Sorokin’s fate and scientific research. However, the question of his role in these events remains open to discussion. Most Soviet/Russian scholars believe that the events of February-March 1917 in Russia acted as a catalyst for the rapid development of Sorokin’s political career, while the Bolsheviks’ coming to power was regarded by him as a counter-revolution. The subsequent political defeat of the socialist-revolutionaries, Sorokin being among them, had a significant impact on his scientific understanding of the cataclysms that occurred in Russia in 1917 and, in particular, contributed to his in-depth study of revolutions through the prism of behaviourism. It was the political experience gained by Sorokin in Russia that became the basis for the formulation of his own theory of revolution, whose main theses were reflected in his fundamental work The Sociology of Revolution (1925). This article is one of the first attempts to provide a comprehensive review of the literature on the “revolutionary” question in the life and work of Pitirim Sorokin that was published in the Soviet Union/ Russian Federation from 1917 to 2019. In terms of practice, the materials analysed here can be used to develop both special courses and a general course on the history of twentieth-century Russia.

Keywords

Pitirim Sorokin, Russian revolutions of 1917, February Revolution, October Revolution, Russian historiography

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