P. Sorokin’s works during the Second World War: the experience of modern reading in Russia and the United States

Abstract

The article attempts to analyze the experience of the present-day perusal in Russia and the United States of the works of outstanding sociologist P.A. Sorokin, written by him during the Second World War. P.A. Sorokin, a well-known Russian-American sociologist, has always attracted the attention of the scientific community with his extraordinary works that have opened new ways of development for social sciences. One of the issues of interest to the scientist was associated with the identification of the nature and essence of wars. The sociologist substantiated the relationship between the war and the subsequent militarization of society; viewed the fact of depletion of the nation’s “biological fund” as a result of the war; using concrete material, he demonstrated the relationship between wars and revolutions. Defending a sociological approach, the scientist suggested that a specific event should be correlated with the analysis of the war phenomenon as a whole. In his book “The Crisis of Our Time” (1941), P. Sorokin showed that the cause of World War II should be sought not in the peculiarities of totalitarian leaders, but in the disorganization and value disorientation of both international and internal relations of states after the previous war. In the book “Russia and the United States” (1944), P. Sorokin substantiated the idea of close cooperation between military allies as a necessary condition for maintaining a long post-war peace. All of Sorokin’s books have caused and still cause an ambiguous reaction in the American sociological community: from full acceptance to the rejection of his “marginal thoughts”. Our domestic discourse is built on the idea of preserving Sorokin’s heritage (Russian and American), deep study and popularization of his sociological concept.