In an interview with the Russian-American sociologist Professor B. Z. Doktorov on his 85th birthday, the results of the mature period of the scientist’s work are summarized. During this period, his work was largely devoted to biographical research of the professional community of Russian sociologists. During the interview, the scientist reveals the essence and features of the author’s biographical method of researching and presenting the fate and creativity of seven generations of Soviet/Russian sociologists. In an interview, B. Doktorov reflects on the main areas of his work over the past 25 years. This is primarily his research on the theory and practice of public opinion in the USA and the USSR/Russia, as well as the history of Soviet-Russian sociology through the prism of studying the biographies of its representatives in the process of conducting interviews with them for 15 years (2005–2020). He conducted 218 interviews with Soviet-Russian sociologists who became participants in the “Large Portrait”, and these interviews were conducted by B. Doktorov from the United States as an independent researcher living in this country. Of great interest are the scientist’s arguments about an important discovery – the socio-chronological generational stratification of the sociological community, which began to be discussed and used by him in 2008–2009. The idea arose of searching for the dominant function of a generation, i. e. its main role on the scene of the actions of the entire sociological community. In 2015, for the first time, a new approach to the study of the history of Russian sociology was considered – generational-functional analysis, the main concepts of which are generation and dominant function. At the end of the interview, the power of the “Large Portrait” created by B. Doktorov’s concept is emphasized, which consists in the fact that the portrait itself is an example of historical optimism, and all sociologists represented in it will always be present in Russian science. And along with them are their colleagues, teachers, mentors, whom they did not forget to mention, which means that not 218 people remain in the memory of our professional community, but several times more.