Word: sorokin
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Lenin's attitude, however, gradually changed. Sorokin was offered a position in the Bolshevik Government. He refused, accepting instead his old professorship at the University of St. Petersburg. "Unfortunately," he remarked wryly, "you cannot teach Sociology without political implications...
...this same period, during the First Revolution, that Sorokin first went to jail; five prison terms were yet to come in the 18 hectic years which followed. Of his first sentence, Sorokin comments, "The warden gave me the use of his office, and it turned out to be the safest place to keep revolutionary literature...
Nineteen-seventeen came, and "every one knew the old regime was over." Sorokin also saw that the Socialists were destined to lost their post-Revolutionary struggle with the Bolsheviks. As a delegate to the First (and only) Soviet Congress, he was in a good position to view the political trend. "Things were going the wrong way," he meditates sadly. "I could see that it was not to be a bloodless revolution. Why I was not shot I shall never know; the profound reason, I guess, is that I am just lucky...
...should have been shot a hundred times by Bolshevik standards," Sorokin says; "the chances of flight were about a hundred to one against me." The Communists, nevertheless, let him escape, but soon regretted their leniency. Immediately after leaving Russia, Sorokin received a telegram from his wife. It read: "Grandmother was very sorry she didn't give you the last blessings." Grandmother was the Secret Police...
Exhausted from his experiences, Sorokin stayed with Jan Masaryk for a short time in Czechoslovakia. "He was a truly great man,' says Sorokin. "He did not lose his simplicity throughout his whole life." In 1923, Sorokin was invited to come to Vassar, and delivered his first lecture after three weeks in the United States. "My accent is atrocious now, but it was super-atrocious then," he laughs...