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Pitirim A. Sorokin was born in 1889 in Komi (province in Northern Russia) into a peasant family. During his early childhood he traveled with his father and two brothers earning their living by remodeling and painting rural churches. His strong interest in education, combined with a natural talent and work ethic, soon transformed him into a leading Russian social scientist and famous politician who was at the center of the Russian Revolution in 1917. In 1923, after his banishment by the Bolsheviks, Pitirim Sorokin started a new life in the United States. In less than 10 years the Russian émigré became a world-renowned sociologist and the founder of the Department of Sociology at Harvard University. Over 30 major books were published over a period of 50 years of active intellectual life. His ideas attracted the attention of Albert Einstein and Albert Schweitzer, Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy, political activists and yoga followers, military and peace proponents. At the time of his death in 1968 Pitirim Sorokin was one of the leading thinkers of the 20th century.
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Pavel Krotov (2008) "Pitirim A. Sorokin Collection at the University of Saskatchewan"

 

Pitirim Sorokin

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I realise that 2008 will be an important test for Russia, and not an easy one.
At the same time, the Constitution of the Russian Federation states that the President, the head of state, is elected for four years through direct secret ballot and cannot stay in office for more than two consecutive terms.
I am not indifferent of course to the question of who will take in their hands the destiny of the country I have devoted my life to serving. But if each successive head of state were to change the Constitution to suit them, we would soon find ourselves without a state at all. I think that Russia's different political forces are sufficiently mature to realise their responsibility to the people of the Russian Federation. In any case, the person who receives the votes of the majority of Russian citizens will become the President of the country.

 

Vladimir Putin

 

The world "legendary" is much overused, but it certainly applies to the seventy-six-year-old Andreas Papandreou, whose life had encompassed so much Greek-American history. As a Greek-born American citizen, he earned a doctorate in economics from Harvard, served in the United States Navy during World War II, and then taught at Harvard, the University of Minnesota, and Berkeley (where he was chairman of the economics department). He was part of Adlai Stevenson's advisory team during his two runs for the presidency. Then he returned to Greece and fought his way into power, surviving a long period in the political wilderness after right-wing pressure forced the resignation of his father, Georgios Papandreou, in 1965, two years before the military coup. He won the prime ministership fifteen years after his father had been forced out of it, and then lost it following a series of corruption scandals - only to make another astonishing comeback, regaining it again in 1993. To conservative Americans, he was anathema, an American turncoat. To Greeks, both those who followed him and those who hated him, he was the dominant political figure of the era.

 

Richard Holbrooke

 

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Einstein always felt Paradise was just around the corner, but as soon as he got there, it started looking a little shabby and something better appeared. I've known a lot of people like Albert in my time, I have felt lots of shocks of recognition. I feel like I got to know Albert as a person in the course of this, and I have more respect for him as a physicist than I did when I started, I have more a sense of what he accomplished and how hard it really was to be Einstein than I did before. It's a great relief to be able to think of him as a real person. If he was around I'd love to buy him a beer ..... but I don't know if I'd introduce him to my sister.

 

Dennis Overbye

 

I will recall once more Russia's most recent history.
Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself.
Individual savings were depreciated, and old ideals destroyed. Many institutions were disbanded or reformed carelessly. Terrorist intervention and the Khasavyurt capitulation that followed damaged the country's integrity. Oligarchic groups — possessing absolute control over information channels — served exclusively their own corporate interests. Mass poverty began to be seen as the norm. And all this was happening against the backdrop of a dramatic economic downturn, unstable finances, and the paralysis of the social sphere.
Many thought or seemed to think at the time that our young democracy was not a continuation of Russian statehood, but its ultimate collapse, the prolonged agony of the Soviet system.
But they were mistaken.
That was precisely the period when the significant developments took place in Russia. Our society was generating not only the energy of self-preservation, but also the will for a new and free life.

 

Vladimir Putin

 

Preparing for my address I found in an old Russian encyclopedia a definition of "peace" as a "commune" — the traditional cell of Russian peasant life. I saw in that definition the people's profound understanding of peace as harmony, concord, mutual help, and cooperation.
This understanding is embodied in the canons of world religions and in the works of philosophers from antiquity to our time.

 

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