Nicholas Timasheff

Nicholas Sergeyevitch Timasheff (Russian: Никола́й Серге́евич Тима́шев) (9 November 1886 – 9 March 1970) was a Russian sociologist, professor of jurisprudence and writer.

Biography

Timasheff "came from an old family of Russian nobility"; his father was Minister of Trade and Industry under Nicholas II. In St. Petersburg, where he was born, he attended a classical high school; he went on to attend the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, the University of Strasbourg, and the Saint Petersburg State University (MA 1910, LLD 1914). At the latter university he met the Polish-Russian jurist Leon Petrazycki, who was a significant influence on him throughout his life. Two years later he began teaching sociological jurisprudence at the University of Petrograd. He emigrated to the United States following an alleged involvement with the Tagantsev Conspiracy in 1920. He took up a similar position at Fordham University, and was one of the original developers of the discipline of sociology of law. He retired in 1957.

Timasheff was the author of various works, including The Great Retreat: The Growth and Decline of Communism in Russia (1946), in which he argued that the Bolsheviks made a conscious retreat from socialist values during the 1930s, instead returning to traditional ones like patriotism and the family. Historian Terry Martin considers this a misnomer, because "in the political and economic spheres, the period after 1933 marked a consolidation, rather than a repudiation, of the most important goals of Stalin's socialist offensive: forced industrialization, collectivization, nationalization, abolition of the market, political dictatorship."

Nicholas Timasheff is buried in the Oakland Cemetery (Yonkers, New York).

Works

• The Crisis in the Marxian Theory of Law (1939)
• An Introduction to the Sociology of Law (1939)
• One Hundred Years of Probation, 1841-1941 (1941–43)
• Religion in Soviet Russia (1942)
• "Tocqueville in the Light of Contemporary Sociology." In: William J. Schlaerth, ed., A Symposium on Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1945)
• The Great Retreat: The Growth and Decline of Communism in Russia (1946)
• Three Worlds: Liberal, Communist, and Fascist Society (1946)
• Sociological Theory: Its Nature and Growth (1955)
• The Sociology of Luigi Sturzo (1962)
• The Sociology of War and Revolution (1965)

See also

• Georges Gurvitch
• Pitirim Sorokin
• Sociology of law

External links

• Works by Nicholas Timasheff at Hathi Trust
• Works by Nicholas Timasheff at JSTOR