Sorokin, Pitirim

Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin was born in Russia in 1889. During the Russian revolution, he was a member of the Social Revolutionary Party. He was active in opposing both the Czarist government and the Communists, being arrested and imprisoned by both regimes. Sorokin served in the cabinet of the post-Czarist Kerensky government in 1917. After his second arrest by the Communists, his death sentence was revoked, and he was allowed to return to graduate work at the University of St. Petersburg, where he was awarded his doctorate in 1922. Later that year, he was exiled from Russia by the Communists. After coming to the United States, he taught at the University of Minnesota. In 1930, he became the first chairperson of the Sociology Department at Harvard ...