Abstract: The article characterizes the goals and the structure of a database which aims at accumulating data of the First  General 1897 Population Census of the Russian Empire preserved by Russian and foreign archives. The database has two basic data input and data retention modules “Archive” and “Finding Aid”. The first module realizes the idea about the hierarchical level structure preservation characteristic of archival storage system (archive – fund – series – file – document). The second module reflects the search history that is data on archival reference books, information about electronic copies of archival reference books and documents as well as their access conditions. The interarchive database is a result of archive, document and source analysis both of archival fund documents and their finding aid. The author considers the idea to create such a system based on the First General Population Census of the Russian Empire new for Russian historical studies. A user is provided with an opportunity to carry out a search (online as well) by archives, funds, files, document types as well as administrative units with account of both to historical and present day names. 

Keywords: fund, source analysis, document analysis, finding aid, electronic reference book, the Russian Empire , interarchive search, archive, database, census

Abstract: The article gives an example of the way self-organized criticality (SOC) theory can be used to study a number of nonlinear effects in social media, protest movement sharp rises in particular. The authors describe the key ideas of the SOC theory and methods to identify pink noise as a SOC attribute. The research object is an associated total of Facebook communities which lent informational and organizational support to the impeachment of Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff. Chronological frames of the work is January 2015 – august 2016. It has been shown that net activity of some communities understudy was a pink noise within a number of periods. SOC systems can demonstrate explosive activity increase that is the inner potential of systems for self-destruction and/or qualitative transformation. The protest social network studied had key features to generate informational avalanches – fast and big explosions of information creation, transmission and copying. The authors name facts supporting the idea that SOC advent in the nets is caused by mass street actions (violent as well). One parameter of the numerical series studied is a power law factor which can be indicative for network diagnostics, in particular, for revealing their potential for spontaneous informational avalanches.

Keywords: non-linear effects, self-organized criticality, pink noise, avalanches, protests, Facebook communities, Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, impeachment, social networks

Abstract: The article characterizes the use of GIS-technologies in historical and geographical research based on statistical and cartographic sources of the late 18th – middle of the 19th centuries. These materials born by the process of General Land Surveying in the Russian Empire provide for mapping and analyzing economical and demographical processes on the micro level: uezd – vladenie (possession) – rural settlement. The research object is a spatial network of rural settlements and possessory dachas of Suzdalskiy Uezd of Vladimirskaya Guberniya – a territory in Central Russia that has long been developed. The main research aim was to carry out total mapping of the uezd. The article demonstrates the opportunities of combining data of the Economical Notes to the General Land Surveying of 1770s-1780s with those of 1850s Mende Atlas, describes the principles of attribute-value table formation and arrangement of GIS-layers by the research topic. The result of the work is a series of thematic maps demonstrating the main parameters of the region’s development in the late 18th century. These are population density, settlements network density and their size, arable land development degree. The results show that these indicators significantly varied even within a relatively small uezd territory. This allows the author to structure it into different northern and southern districts contrasting even as far as their development is concerned. 

Keywords: historical geography, agrarian history, environmental history, history of Vladimirskiy Krai, socio-economic history, rural settlement, historical demography, history of Russia, historical information science, GIS-technologies

Abstract: The article studies functions and software for historical geoinformation systems. The research object is historical geoinformation systems, dynamical GIS-projects creation technologies and means of spatiotemporal analysis. The author considers separate structural parts of IGIS-resources creation service in detail. Emphasis is laid on auxiliary materials for historical GIS-cartography, in particular, to the sample base of conventional values and means of historical geoinformation systems unification. The study employs descriptive and comparative methods to demonstrate advantages of the proposed GIS-editor conception for historical maps and projects better. The author describes his variant of a specialized historical geoinfirmation system editor that takes into account specific functions of spatiotemporal analysis. Distinctive features of this resource in comparison with common editors are considered as well. The article concludes that historical GIS-projects need specialized software and functions and only close cooperation of historians and GIS-specialists will lead to an optimum tool set of historical maps and geoinformation systems.

Keywords: spatiotemporal analysis , historical geoinformation systems, modeling of historical processes , information technologies, historical electronic cartography, dynamic map, monitoring, relational databases, map legend, multi-user editor

Abstract: The authors demonstrate opportunities and discuss prospects of a new text editing software application of similar origin and general structure. This application is developed to be integrated within a program of fuzzy genealogical classification. The research focus is medieval texts which have long been in use and have been preserved in many variants. The study aims at searching links between different variants of texts that are hidden to experts and their presentation for further expert evaluation. Such an approach adapts and develops fuzzy sets theory means and thus lets us single out close groups within the variants preserved and genealogically link them to any reliability degree desired. The classification proposed bases not only on quantitative data (number of variant readings, texts proximity coefficients), but qualitative parameters as well (weight coefficients of variant readings) accounting for their importance for textological classification that has been ignored in formalized approaches before. Successful work of this software application is sure to provide a researcher with a powerful and handy tool to compare and analyze numerous medieval texts with the help of algorithm based mathematical methods.

Keywords: text editing, collation of manuscripts, lemmatization, tokenization, fuzzy classification, genealogical relations, contamination , typology, longest common subsequence, weight coefficients

Abstract: The article studies how Soviet food industry problems were described in mass-circulation press of this branch during the 1933 crisis year. The author compares ideological, production and social issues in mass-circulation newspapers by Red Oktyabr’ and Rot Front confectionery factories. Interaction between two content layers of these periodicals is studied as well. Emphasis is laid on general and distinctive features of the way problems were described as well as the extent certain issues of mass-circulation newspapers of different enterprises were typical to. New research technique has been developed and employed to analyze mass-circulation newspapers with the help of MAXQDA program. The computer based content-analysis lets the author conclude that in the crisis situation of the first year of the second Pyatiletka (Five-Year Plan) mass-circulation newspapers were used to socially mobilize workers and draw their attention away from that situation. Social and production problems taken together were more common in the papers than ideological ones. However, attempts to form a positive reality relate to qualitative rather than quantitative aspect of propaganda in food industry mass-circulation newspapers. 

Keywords: Soviet food industry, content-analysis, the Second Five-Year Plan, Red Oktyabr’ factory, Rot Front factory , MAXQDA, Soviet press, the USSR, mass-circulation press, industrialization in the USSR

Abstract: The article studies the formation of the “Council of Chief Designers” cooperation that was a collective body and an unofficial coordination center determining technical and methodical course the Soviet space branch followed (Sergey Pavlovich Korolev, Vladimir Pavlovich Barmin, Valentin Petrovich Glushko, Nikolai Alekseevich Pilyugin, Mikhail Sergeevich Ryazanskiy and Viktor Ivanovich Kuznetsov as well as Boris Evseevich Chertok and Mstislav Vsevolodovich Keldysh). The author analyzes their relations and reveals the role of communication for this process on the basis of private sources (letters, diaries and recollections) by means of content-analysis and statistical analysis. The period understudy is the years before 1966 when the Council was in its first “Korolev” composition. In spite of the fact that Soviet and Russian cosmonautics can boast a period of over 60-year development, top secrecy has resulted only in official biographies of the Council members. Works studying them as people, individuals with their own traits, fate and relations have not been written yet. 

Keywords: rocket, personal interaction, professional interaction, communicative factor , behavior pattern, content-analysis, full-text database, cosmonautics, Korolev, the Council of Chief Designers

Abstract: The article is the author’s second one considering network analysis of historiography of the History and Computer Association (HCA) from 1992 to 2016. The former article studied dynamics of the composition and structure of the HCA network on the level of regional historical information science centers, their problematic issues, methodology and technological aspects. The present article analyzes the structure and dynamics of an interregional group that is the basis element of the HCA network. The author studies four traditional historical information science schools (Moscow, Minsk, Barnaul and Tambov ones) as well as their interaction. The study is carried out on the basis of an information system created by the author that includes a bibliographical and a full-text database of the HCA publications. The research method is network analysis. The author makes a conclusion about further prospects to study academic ties of researchers working within the same filed gained with the help of network analysis methods and technologies. This approach allows us to study the formation of both formal and “virtual” science group. Co-authorship data provide for tracing the advent of research centers and schools of thought, their dynamics, concentration, central figures these groups are formed around. Linking information about these groups with topical sections of the works published one can see their research interests, similarity and distinctive features. 

Keywords: scientometrics, historiography, bibliography, network analysis, historical information science, association, database, information system , interregional group, schools of thought

Abstract: The article studies the use of network analysis in historical research on the basis of a prosopographic database. The database has been created by the author to analyze collective biography of Moscow underground architects in 1935-1991 on the basis of information gained from many scattered bibliographical materials stored at the Archival Fund of Architects’ Biographical Dictionary of the Schusev State Museum of Architecture and some other sources. The research aim is to study the evolution of professional interactions network between creative unions and individual authors of the underground stations and halls. All alterations of the character of interactions are analyzed within three periods of the underground history: the Stalin period (1935–1954), the large-scale construction period (1955–1969) and the late Soviet modernism period (1970–1991). The network analysis is carried out in UCINET 6. MS Access crosstabs were formed in the “Architect-Underground object” format which were then exported to MS Excel and transformed with the help of UCINET into tables demonstrating all the cases of architects’ co-authorship. The professional network was visualized through NetDraw graphs. The study shows that the Moscow architects’ professional network was not immediate and in 1935-1991 went along the path of integration from small creative unions and workshops to a single monolithic structure where nearly each architect was related to other colleagues through his immediate co-authors. A number of statistics have been got that characterize the structure of this network.

Keywords: social networks, ego networks, statistics, Moscow underground, architects, prosopography, co-authorship, database , centrality, network analysis

Abstract: The article is dedicated to the 25th Anniversary of the Association “History and Computer” – a professional union of specialists employing mathematical methods and new information technologies in historical research and education. The research object is the understanding of the first steps of historical information science in Russia. The first year of the HCA (1993) is studied. Some important conferences, workshops and meetings were held. The author notes the “horizontal” character of academic ties in comparison with the “vertical” structure practiced before. The article historiographically describes the genetic relation of historical information science causes and the first period of its development. The author as the direct participant of all those events shares his impressions and thoughts thus forming a more comprehensive perception of the new research domain. It is emphasized that the atmosphere of creativity and amiability that was formed in the first HCA days encouraged successful development of historical information science.  

Keywords: new information technologies, computer, History and Computer, Association , conference , laboratory, workshop, creative work, historical information science, history