Pitirim A. Sorokin

PITIRIM A. SOROKIN, who died this weekend, made a rare public appearance at Harvard two years ago at a "Speak-Out" on the Vietnam War. Compared with the score of illustrious professors who spoke before him, Sorokin was not well known. But in spite of his age and his ill health, he overwhelmed the audience with his fervor, his intellect, and his unbending hostility to America's foreign policy.

Sorokin was no stranger to invective. He was raised in Russia before the Revolution, and by the age of 15 he was already familiar with Czarist dungeons. Under Kerensky's regime he was a Cabinet member. When the Bolsheviks overthrew Kerensky he was imprisoned once again. He was banished from Russia in 1922, but he never lost a strong emotional attachment to his fatherland.

When he first came to Harvard in 1931 he established a department of Sociology. (He had earlier set up a department of Sociology at the University of Petrograd.) For many years he taught Sociology A, but for the last 20 he had not taught any courses, and undergraduates lost sight of him.

If Sorokin's name did come up occasionally, it was usually as a source of derision. His study of love in five dimensions at the Center for Research on Creative Altruism, which he founded in 1949, convinced many that he was eccentric. But the books he wrote on love and altruism, like all of his works, are widely known and respected by sociologists.

In many ways Sorokin anticipated, by more than a generation, the attitudes and pre-occupations of the 1960's. Convinced that the Universities and Foundations were increasingly devoted to the study of war, he resolved to study love and peace. He began to explore Hindu mysticism and Raji-Yoga mysticism two decades ago.

Sorokin objected to the enormous grants, often from the government, which now finance so much of scholarly research. He once said with pride that during his six years at the University of Minne-sota he wrote a dozen books, and received a total of $43.40 in grants.

Sorokin's sociology books are studied and respected in almost every country of the world. Even in Russia his works are now available. A visiting colleague from the Soviet Union once told him that he was regarded in Russia as the most eminent non-Marxian sociologist in the world.

His Center for Research on Creative Altruism may tempt some to make light of Sorokin. But he was a scholar and an innovator, and his books will be studied by sociologists for many years.