Pitirim Sorokin’s contribution to rural sociology: Russian, European and American milestones of a scientific career

ABSTRACT

The whole of Pitirim Sorokin’s fascinating and difficult scientific life led to his fundamental works on urban–rural relationships being expressed in the terms ‘rural–urban continuum’ and ‘rurbanism’. However, only a few special studies have been devoted to different aspects of his biography and scientific interests. The legacy of Sorokin as a rural sociologist has not yet become a subject of special studies in Russian social science. This contribution considers the key stages of Sorokin’s scientific career as contributing to the development and institutionalization of rural sociology as a discipline closely connected with urban sociology.

KEYWORDS:

• Sorokin
• Marxism
• rural sociology
• rural–urban continuum
• rurbanism

Acknowledgement

Support from the Basic Research Program of the National Research University Higher School of Economics is gratefully acknowledged by Irina Trotsuk.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Irina Trotsuk http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2279-3588

Notes

1 The idea of a ‘rural–urban continuum’ was popular and quite productive during the twentieth century, though it is often criticized and now almost forgotten. It became extremely popular at the end of the 1920s; that is why Sorokin and anthropologist Robert Redfield almost simultaneously introduced similar ideas – ‘rural–urban continuum’ and ‘folk–urban continuum’ (Redfield 1930). The first concept is more well known and widely used in social sciences. In the 1950s–1970s the ‘rural–urban continuum’ theory was criticized due to the dramatic decline of the rural population in the United States and Europe (see e.g. Dewey 1960; Newby 1980). Newby also believed that the concept ‘rural–urban continuum’ describes the life in the countryside in the nineteenth century, but not the agrarian structures under developed capitalism. At the beginning of the twenty-first century the concept of a ‘rural–urban continuum’ was revived to explain the paradoxes of the so-called ‘global village’ (see e.g. Lynch 2005; Rural–urban continuum codes 2013) and the spatial and, partly, historical variety of rural–urban relations (continua, in the plural) that can be studied at different scales. Today different versions of rural–urban continua seem complementary, reflecting the evolutionary, multi-scale and gradual nature of the continuum whose complexity and heterogeneity is increasing in many Russian regions from the semi-rural toward inter-regional or mega-urban types (e.g. Treivish 2016).

2 The term ‘Revolution of 1917’ refers to the dramatic events that took place in the period between February (the abdication of Tsar Nicholai II and the coming to power of the coalition government of liberals and left-wing forces) and October (the Bolshevik Revolution led by V.I. Lenin and L.D. Trotsky, and the overthrow of the left-liberal coalition government of the Prime Minister A.F. Kerensky) of 1917. Pitirim Sorokin, as a member of the Social Revolutionary Party and Kerensky’s secretary, played a significant role in the revolutionary events that took place in the period from February to March of 1917.

3 ‘Great Break’ is a metaphoric term introduced by I.V. Stalin to define the expansion of the Soviet collectivization in the countryside in 1929 (Stalin 1929). Today the term ‘Great Break’ refers to the bifurcation point in the history of the USSR that was followed by the brutal excesses of the Stalinist policy in the first Five-Year Plan.

4 The Russian theoretical and political debates on the prospects of collective farms in Russia in the 1910s–1920s (advantages of collective farming, social differentiation in rural areas, etc.) often mentioned the ideas of Kropotkin and Lenin. We can say that Stalin’s collectivization began not in the early 1930s, but in the late 1920s (1929), if we consider relevant debates and not the practical implementation of the collectivization policies. In the early 1930s (1933), collectivization was already ending. According to Sorokin, the history of Soviet collectivization began with the victory of the Bolsheviks in 1917.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexander Nikulin

Alexander M. Nikulin has a PhD in economics, and is the Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA). He has published several books and many articles on rural sociology and agrarian history of Russia. His research has been supported by the Open Society Institute, MacArthur Foundation, Russian State Scientific Foundation, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, INTAS, OXFAM and World Bank. His recent books include Peasant life practices. Russia 1991–2012 (2013); and Agrarians, power and countryside: from past to present (2014). Email: [email protected]

Irina Trotsuk

Irina V. Trotsuk, has a PhD in sociology, and is a Senior Researcher, Center for Fundamental Sociology, Higher School of Economics (HSE); Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) and Associate Professor, Sociology Chair, RUDN University. She has published several books on methodology of sociological research, and many articles on rural sociology. Her research has been supported by the Russian Foundation for Humanities, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, OXFAM and World Bank. Her recent books include Textual analysis in sociology: problems and promises of different types of non-structured data ‘reading’ (2014); and translations into Russian of Class dynamics of agrarian change by H. Bernstein (2016) and The art of not being governed: an anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia by J.C. Scott (2017). Email: [email protected]