Abstract
The article offers an analysis of scientific views of Sergei Mikhailovich Shirokogoroff not well known in the Russian sociological audience. The S.M. Shirokogoroff conceptual views contain a characteristic position in understanding the nature of the social, as built on the basis of the ethnic. The authors of the article identified two priorities of research of social phenomena by S.M. Shirokogoroff: (1) the desire for integrity and consistency, the focus of research on the harmonious study of social phenomena in unity with biological, cultural and other; (2) priority and synthesizing principle of the biological in the understanding of the social. It is noted that in the views of the scholar there are implemented the principles of unity and integrity in conjunction with a prime understanding of the role of the biological principle in the studied elements of social life. The creative activity of S.M. Shirokogoroff is divided into two periods: Russian and Chinese ones. During the first period, the views of the scientist are formed, the priorities in scientific research are chosen both in determining the objects of research, and methodology, methods and principles; in publishing research results. During the Chinese period, the publication activity of S.M. Shirokogoroff becomes extremely multifaceted; he teaches at a number of universities His contacts with Fei Xiaotong, a the most famous sociologist in China today, becomes important for the subsequent development of Chinese sociology. The scientific approaches developed by the scientist found their development in the theoretical and applied research of the Chinese School of Sociological Research in the 1930s. Its basic ideas developed the ideas of S.M. S.M. Shirokogoroff: the nature of social phenomena is a special form of biological adaptability of ethnic units.