I first met Barry Johnston one hot summer afternoon about 1985 while he was pursuing investigations at the Harvard archives.  He took time off to come to Winchester along with Lawrence Nichols, to visit our family home, get some idea of archival materials pertaining to my father Pitirim that were still there, and to make my acquaintance.  I saw he had become interested in father but at the time mainly as a player in the historical development of a sociological program at Harvard, with all its rivalries and intrigues, its ups and downs.  I never quite understood this interest, preferring to look at a scholar’s or scientist’s works as the things that really count, never mind the politics!  At this meeting Barry was rather tentative.  It was some time later that I began to realize his interest in father had become deeper and that he had set out to write a biography focusing substantially, to be sure, on my father’s academic career, but based on thorough study and comprehension of his writings, trips to several archives, and conversations with colleagues from his time.  As the work progressed there were two more visits to Winchester and a long conversation with Barry over dinner at the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge.   We discussed his plans for the book and some offers of help from me regarding aspects of father’s life outside Emerson Hall.  One of the things I could promise him would be some photos from family albums, and on one of the Winchester visits we spent considerable time picking out suitable images, which I then refurbished, where necessary, and printed.  As the book developed, it still retained its academic focus but admitted more from Pitirim’s personal and family life.  The illustrations tried to match this with a balance of pictures weighted towards academic colleagues and congresses (not so many as to become deadly) but admitting family, fish, and a cornfield as well.

In February, 1999, with the overthrow of the Soviet Government now past, Russian social scientists held a moveable conference entitled, “Return of Pitirim Sorokin,” partly in Moscow and partly in St. Petersburg.  This was to show that the persona non grata status of Pitirim in Russia had been lifted, and indeed that many of his writings seemed pertinent to the present time and place.  Barry was one of five Americans to participate in the conference and one of three to agree to go on to an additional symposium and tour of the Komi Republic being arranged in Syktyvkar, its capital, to celebrate Pitirim as a native son and a model for its aspiring youth.   It was very cold, and we were all wearing heavy parkas and boots.  When we landed at Syktyvkar airport it was already dark, but as we moved onto the ramp leading down from the plane, the sky lit up brilliantly and we could see photographers and TV cameramen crowding about, making it clear we were the celebrity figures of the moment.  This continued for several days.  We received fur hats, much hospitality, and were driven in a convoy to my father’s birthplace in Turya and all around; but as Barry confided to us, the moment of descent from the plane was the closest he’d ever get to the life of Mick Jagger!

Sergei Sorokin, Barry Johnston, and Richard Hoyt at the Komi National Ethnographic Museum. Russia, 1999.