Sociology of Revolution

[5] Sorokin argued that contemporaries rather than "descendants" are "the best observers and judges of historical events", suggesting that he saw a similar precedence in natural sciences where "direct experience has long been preferred".

[6] Sorokin suggested that the writing of historical accounts based on documentary evidence is "very unsatisfactory" and that historians studying events "some generations after" are prone to "the errors of a foreigner observing from a distance".

[10] In following this approach, Sorokin made connections between the writing of a social scientific account of revolution and the development of other "causal relations" by scientists such as Newton, Mendel, or Avogadro - arguing that "the historical process though unrepeated as a whole is woven out of repeated elements".

[19] Sorokin compared the development of a revolution to the "eruption of a volcano", arguing that if "cracks and bursts" appear in social forms and conditions, then humanity reverts to "the fire of biological impulses".

[20] Sorokin argues that with the breakdown of social conditions, humanity resembles "a wild animal, devil-possessed" and that it involves formerly peaceful persons becoming "a murderer", "a thief", or "a profligate".

[30] In Sociology of Revolution, Sorokin set out four precepts which he referred to as "principal canons" which provided a checklist for progressive development in society.

[36] Returning to his presentation of his analytic method as a kind of natural science, Sorokin characterised his principal canons as being similar to what was "applied for example at the construction of a bridge or the improving of a breed of cows".

[37] John Grierson, reviewing Sociology of Revolution on its publication in 1925, wrote that the "chief value of the book is in its first-hand Russian material".

[41] Park summarised the work as "not an easy nor interesting book to read", suggesting that it was most useful for "those who are eager for facts to discredit communism as an economic and political idea".

[42] Alex Simirenko situated Sorokin's Sociology of Revolution within his overarching practice of using data "as a means for confirming his personal apocalyptic vision" and his "synthetic" approach which aimed at producing "a general statement on the history of mankind".