On the eve of Sorokin's birthday (February 4), the Komi National Library presented a series of talks and videos about Sorokin's works and heritage, entitled, "The Long Journey of the Big Man," and the next day Glava Gaizer led a motorcade to Sorokin's birthplace, Turya village in the Knyazhpogost District, where he placed a basket of flowers at the memorial to Pitirim and addressed the residents and visitors, among whom numbered officials from the central government and regional institutions, as well as representatives from the Komi scientific community.

Local dwellers of Turya Village and guests 

Governor ("Glava") of Komi Republic Vyacheslav Gaizer

VIP's At Turya Museum: Governor Gaizer [right], Chair of Komi Branch
of Russian Academy of Sciences Magomed Askhabov [left] 

[photo by: Media Department, Governor of Komi Administration]

At a reception at Turya's ethnographic museum, located in a peasant's log house from olden times and named after Sorokin in 1999, Glava Gaizer presented the first translation into the Komi language of Sorokin's autobiography "A Long Journey" as well as another book compiling Sorokin's "Judgments and Aphorisms" edited by the writer V. M. Terebikhin. And after a lunch of typical Komi food at the museum and a performance by a local folk group, a Turya village librarian chanted "The Lamentation of Pitirim Sorokin," in traditional Komi style [see below].

Later this year an international conference on "Pitirim Sorokin and Actual Present-Day Problems" will be held in August, and at that time the unveiling of a monument and additional commemorative gestures are anticipated. Komi support is also promised for a grand project to publish Pitirim Sorokin's collected works in Russian, already under way, although completion is not expected for several years.

Traditional Komi Lament Commemorates Pitirim Sorokin

A traditional Komi-style lament was sung in Turya on February 4, 2014, by village librarian Antonina Sokerina as a locally-initiated contribution to the birthday festivities for Pitirim Sorokin being held there. The original Lamentation was written some years earlier by Nadezda Pavlova, librarian and folklorist from the neighboring Gam village where Sorokin first received formal schooling in 1902-1904. Sokerina received a copy from Pavlova in 2004, and for the present occasion added a few lines of her own:

Oh, how big is our man Pitirim Sorokin

Oh, he is a burning candle, our bright candle 

Oh, by crying and mourning

We will have to sing a song 

Our Komi people and our Ust’Vym dwellers 

In each village were able to raise money

In order to pave a way for our smart/talented boy

Who lost his father and mother 

Oh, how much sorrow and misery 

He saw in Russian lands

When his bright mind just conceived 

The day and night came together 

Oh, he was torn away from the Motherland 

His talent was humiliated 

And he had leave to another country 

With the name of an enemy of the people 

Oh, thanks and hundreds of gratitudes 

That he never forgot Komi people and his Motherland

Did not condemn and was affronted  

Always burned as a bright and pristine candle

VIDEO recorded by Valery Sharapov

Audio recording: Antonina Sokerina "Lamentation to Pitirim Sorokin" February 4, 2014