Historical informatics
ISSN (online): 2585-7797
Media registration certificate: ЭЛ № ФС 77 - 68777 от 17.02.2017
Founder: NB-Media Ltd.
Editor-in-Chief: Borodkin Leonid Iosifovich, Corresponding Member of the RAS, Doctor of Sc., Full Professor
Frequency / Assess: 4 issues per year / Open
Included in: Higher Attestation Commission list, RISC
最新一期
编号 3 (2025)
Articles
International issues in the reflection of the periodical press of the food industry of the USSR during the first and second five-year plans: analysis in MAXQDA software
摘要
The article analyzes materials from the mass newspapers "Babayevec" (State Confectionery Factory named after P.A. Babayev), "Za boyevye tempi" (State Confectionery Factory "Rot Front"), "Nasha pravda" (State Confectionery Factory "Krasny Oktyabr"), and the industry newspaper "Pishchevik" ("For the Food Industry," "Food Industry"). The aim of the article is to study the reflection of international issues in industry and mass newspapers of the food industry of the USSR during the first and second five-year plans. The study of the influence of these publications on the foreign policy perceptions of workers in the 1920s and 1930s is a relevant issue, as it allows for an expansion of knowledge about the means and methods of forming patriotic attitudes among Soviet citizens in the prelude to World War II. The article employs content analysis using the MAXQDA program. The author tests some new functions of this software for working with newspaper texts. The research has shown that international issues occupied a significant place in the industry and mass media of the food industry of the USSR during the first and second five-year plans. A common theme in the food industry newspapers was the reflection of pressing foreign policy challenges and tasks of the state. The examined publications responded promptly to changes in the international agenda, especially during periods of heightened political tension in the USSR and abroad. The specificity of the studied periodicals is traced in the dynamics of coverage of international events; however, the structure of the core semantic relationships regarding international issues was uniform across all examined newspapers. Under the unified control of censorship and party organs, the industry and mass newspapers of the food industry during the first and second five-year plans acted as effective tools for ideological influence, contributing to the formation of foreign policy perceptions and patriotic attitudes among workers – their target audience.
Historical informatics. 2025;(3):1-17
1-17
5th International Summer School for Young Researchers in Historical Informatics: Current Trends in Interdisciplinary Approaches.
摘要
The article contains information about the 5th International Summer School for Young Scholars in Historical Informatics and summarizes its outcomes. Summer schools in this field have been held since 2021 in an online format. The 5th school involved more than 150 students, graduate students, and young scholars representing universities and research institutions from Russia and neighboring countries. The organizers of the school are the Faculty of History of Lomonosov Moscow State University and the Association of Researchers in Historical Informatics (AIC). The goal of the school is to familiarize participants with the latest trends in the application of information/digital technologies, data analysis methods, and artificial intelligence technologies in historical research, and to form a modern understanding of data and methods of processing them within the field of historical science. The program of the school included four full working days. On the lecture day, June 26, six lectures on current issues in historical informatics were delivered. In the master classes on June 27 and 28, participants had the opportunity to gain practical skills in working with specific methods of processing historical data and relevant software. On June 29, the final day of the school, a plenary session took place, discussing the issue of open data in the humanities. It was noted that the situation with open data in Russia remains complex, and even more so concerning the humanities. Regarding historical data, most of it has a local character, almost all produced within specific historical research; projects for creating open data for broad use in academic research are virtually nonexistent. In conclusion, a general discussion was held on issues related to the organization of the school's work, its program, and outcomes. An increasing activity of young scholars in studying modern trends in historical research related to historical informatics was noted.
Historical informatics. 2025;(3):18-33
18-33
Computers and management: implementation of the industrial control system at "Moskvitch" in the 1970s
摘要
The article examines the experience of implementing an Automated Control System (ACS) at the production association "Moskvich" in the 1970s in the context of the all-union policy of automation and informatization of industrial production. Based on statistical reports from the enterprise's computing center, regulatory acts, industry directives, and planning-report documentation, the key stages of designing and commissioning the ACS are traced. The structure of computer load, dynamics of equipment downtimes, and distribution of computing resources among production, planning, and administrative tasks are discussed in detail. The composition and specialization of tasks performed by the system, as well as the transformation of the personnel of the computing center—changes in headcount, qualification requirements, and employment structure—are analyzed. Particular attention is paid to the technical difficulties related to the setup and operation of computing equipment, problems of integrating the ACS into existing production processes, and the specifics of interaction between engineers, operators, and management personnel. The work touches on the social aspects of automation, including the adaptation of workers to new forms of labor organization and changes in the distribution of managerial functions. The article addresses the technical and social challenges accompanying the automation process, including issues of interaction between various categories of personnel and adaptation to new management forms. The results obtained allow for a more accurate assessment of the real practices of ACS functioning in the late Soviet industry, revealing contradictions between the official goals of automation and their actual implementation, as well as complementing existing views on the development of computing infrastructure in the USSR. The research findings highlight that the implementation of the ACS at "Moskvich" was not merely a technical task, but a complex socio-technical process that required consideration of the human factor, organizational changes, and adaptation of existing production practices to new technological realities and management approaches, as well as the cultural characteristics of the enterprise.
Historical informatics. 2025;(3):34-55
34-55
Founders of Russian joint-stock banks in the 1860s - 1870s: contemporary use of the RUSCORP database from 1993
摘要
The article is dedicated to the issues of reusing historical databases, using the example of the database RUSCORP, created in 1993 by American historian Thomas Owen, which contains information about joint-stock companies in the Russian Empire from 1700 to 1914. Based on RUSCORP, the article examines the social status of the founders of commercial and land banks during the years 1864–1873, i.e., during the period of the formation of a new banking system. The data processing followed the classic ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) approach typical for data analysts, within which the necessary data was extracted from RUSCORP using a spreadsheet application, transformed from the storage format (*.txt) to a tabular format, cleaned, and loaded into a database management system. The new database contains information about 62 banks and 787 instances of founding, which included both individuals and banking and trading houses. Analysis of this data showed that joint-stock banks were established not only in financial capitals (St. Petersburg and Moscow), but almost three-quarters of the cases pertained to regions. The banking industry was little affected by legislative restrictions, and banks varied significantly in capital size, with a median of 1.5 million rubles. Analysis of the records of founders revealed that, in addition to individual founders, 12.6% of the records pertained to banking and trading houses, more than half of the records were attributed to Russian or Russified entities, and nearly a third of the cases involved Russian Jews, Germans, Greeks, Poles, and foreign Germans. Only 37 records out of 787 pertained to subjects or citizens of other countries. In terms of social composition, 43.4% of the records belonged to the trading, industrial, and financial world, 32.7% were aristocrats, courtiers, landowners, officials, and military personnel, while in 23.9% of cases, the status could not be determined. A separate direction of research involves identifying information loss from the primary source and discussing ways to refine and expand the database on bank founders.
Historical informatics. 2025;(3):56-76
56-76
Central and Regional Muslim Spiritual Administrations in Crimea and Bashkiria (1920s–1930s): A Network Theory Analysis
摘要
This article addresses current issues of religious policy, national autonomy, confessional self-government, and the role of Muslim leaders and muftiates. The history of religious institutions during the Soviet period represents a complex interplay of political, social, and cultural processes. The focus of the article is on the interaction between the Central Spiritual Administration of Muslims (TsDUM) and the only regional national muftiates of the 1920s–1930s – those of Bashkiria and Crimea. Through the example of these structures, the authorities' tendencies to regulate the management system of Muslim organizations are clearly traced. The study of national muftiates in Crimea and Bashkiria is of particular importance, as they not only performed religious functions but were also connected to national movements, serving as platforms for the consolidation of Bashkir and Crimean Tatar elites. Their aspiration for autonomy faced a dual confrontation: on one side, unification attempts by TsDUM, and on the other, administrative pressure from the Soviet state. The evolution of Muslim spiritual structures under Soviet policy is presented within the framework of Network Theory, which allows for modeling connections between various "actors" and analyzing their resilience, centrality, and influence (power). Graph construction, visualization, and metric calculations were performed using Gephi v. 0.10.1 with its built-in algorithms. The novelty of the research is expressed in: a) the application of Network Theory to the analysis of state-religious relations; b) a comparative analysis of muftiates in an interregional context; c) conducting historical research through the lens of spiritual leaders. The network approach revealed that the autonomy of the muftiates was based on local support, which made them particularly vulnerable to the repressions of the 1930s. Network analysis of the interaction between national and centralized religious structures under Soviet policy not only reveals the specifics of the functioning of muftiates in Crimea and Bashkiria but also offers a new methodological tool for studying Soviet history. The modern fragmentation of Muslim spiritual administrations in the Russian Federation partially replicates the centralization-regionalization conflict of the 1920s–1930s, underscoring the value of studying this historical experience.
Historical informatics. 2025;(3):77-98
77-98
Automatic information extraction from ego-documents: a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of large language models based on the example of K.A. Berezkin's diary.
摘要
The subject of the study is a comparative analysis of the performance, analytical strategies, and limitations of four large language models – Gemini-2.5-Pro, o3, Grok3, and Deepseek-v3 – in the task of extracting structured information from a historical ego-document. The analysis aims to determine the models' ability to work with complex narratives characterized by a high degree of subjectivity, an abundance of indirect evidence, multi-layered meanings, and emotional coloration. The key limitations of the models – over-interpretation, missing indirect evidence, and the trade-off between completeness and accuracy – are considered part of their analytical strategies. The material used was the diary of the Vologda gymnasium student K.A. Berezkin for the year 1849. The work addresses a complex task of developing and testing an approach that allows for the transformation of unstructured source text into a dataset suitable for solving a specific historiographical task – analyzing the perception of the European revolutions of 1848-1849 in the Russian province. The methodology is based on the automatic extraction of structured information using large language models. A comprehensive toolkit has been developed, including a domain-specific ontology, prompts, and a detailed JSON schema for data capture. The performance of the models was evaluated based on quantitative (completeness, accuracy, F1-score) and qualitative indicators (granularity, adherence to the ontology, understanding of historical context, typical errors). The scientific novelty lies in the first systematic testing and comparative analysis of the performance of leading language models in working with a historical ego-document in domestic historiography. It was established that the models implement various data extraction strategies: from exhaustive, but "noisy" coverage (Gemini-2.5-Pro) to highly accurate, but selective (Deepseek-v3), which directly determines the suitability of the resulting dataset for different research scenarios: from exploratory analysis to the creation of verified databases. The key conclusion of the study is that automated extraction is not merely a technical operation, but a form of digital hermeneutics. Accordingly, the final dataset is not objective data passively "discovered" in the source, but capta – a set of information selected for a specific task. The study shows that the application of artificial intelligence raises historian's requirements for critical expertise, shifting their role from information retrieval to verification and interpretation of machine results.
Historical informatics. 2025;(3):99-127
99-127
Fine-tuning a model based on the Transformer architecture for normalizing a corpus of medieval texts in German from the 14th-15th centuries from the Order of Prussia.
摘要
The article is dedicated to the methods of automatic normalization of texts in Middle High German and Early New High German for the application of NLP in medieval history research. It provides an overview of existing approaches to the automatic normalization of historical texts in German. The problems of normalizing medieval German texts are identified: the peculiarities of using substitution dictionaries and replacement rules. The limitations of these approaches and the necessity of considering the goals of normalization are described. Neural language models are defined as the most promising for automatic normalization. The study compares the effectiveness of existing neural language models (NMT) with respect to texts in Middle High German and Early New High German. It demonstrates the low effectiveness of using NMT trained on texts from the New and Modern eras. Based on reviews presented in the literature, it asserts the need to prepare NMT according to specific goals and corpora. For the normalization of texts from the 14th-15th centuries created in monastic Prussia, a neural language model based on the Transformer architecture (BART) was further trained, and its effectiveness was presented in comparison with other models. The model was trained on a custom dataset of word pairs: original-normalized, consisting of 6,570 pairs. The conditions for retraining the model were: Epoch = 28; Batch = 50. For normalizing a corpus of texts in three historical forms of the German language, the DTAEC Type Normalizer model was chosen. The effectiveness of the retrained model's normalization was compared with existing models trained on German texts from the New and Modern eras based on the metrics of Accuracy, Accuracy OOV, CER, and Levenshtein distance. The retrained model shows significant effectiveness compared to other models. One normalized sentence using the model is proposed for review, and a comparison with a benchmark is conducted. Instances of "hallucinations" in the retrained model were identified. With an Accuracy OOV of 89.6, using this method is considered promising. However, the identified shortcomings in text normalization indicate the necessity of employing additional normalization methods, such as lemmatization.
Historical informatics. 2025;(3):128-140
128-140
Hierarchical clustering of the readings of the members of the Society of United Slavs using fuzzy set theory methods
摘要
The subject of the research presented in this article is the testimonies of members of the Society of United Slavs regarding the murder of the royal family. The article accumulates all testimonies from members of the Society that touch upon the issue of the intent to murder the royal family. The focus of the study in the article is the degree of radicalization among the members of the Society of United Slavs and the degree of similarity in their views on the proposed methods of the Society. The authors employ expert evaluation methods for an objective interpretation of each participant's testimony and to uncover their understandings of the goals of the Society of United Slavs. Subsequently, the authors apply methods from fuzzy set theory to construct an objective hierarchical clustering of the members of the Society, to demonstrate the internal connections that existed among the participants based on the similarity or dissimilarity of their views. The hierarchical clustering of the members of the Society is based on their testimonies. The authors establish an objective scale of radicalism for the testimonies of each member of the Society and introduce a measure of similarity of their testimonies, on the basis of which clustering is further constructed using the transitive closure of the introduced relation. The main conclusion of the presented work is that within the Society of United Slavs, two clusters were identified, wherein the Decembrists held diametrically opposed views regarding the permissible methods of achieving the Society's goals. The first cluster is centered on Decembrist I.I. Gorbachyovsky and includes Decembrists N.F. Lisovsky and I.V. Kiriev. Members of this cluster were convinced that the Society planned the murder of the royal family and were willing to adhere to this idea until the end. The second cluster included P.I. Borisov and A.I. Tyutchev, who were confident that the murder of the royal family was not intended. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that it is the first time that fuzzy set theory has been applied to the method of hierarchical clustering of members of the Society of United Slavs.
Historical informatics. 2025;(3):141-150
141-150
Modeling and real demographic processes in rural settlements of Tambov Oblast in 2010–2020
摘要
This study aims to reconstruct the demographic strategies of peasant micro-societies in Tambov Oblast between 2010 and 2020. The research encompasses all 1,648 settlements in the region and forms part of a larger project on the fractal modeling of demographic strategies within the agrarian population of European Russia over a long-term historical perspective, from the mid-19th century onward. The authors sought to come closer to answering questions about the factors that underlie the demographic resilience of local communities and the potential for their demographic development (scenarios of desolation/stabilization/growth). Furthermore, the modeled strategies were compared with known data on real demographic processes. This approach was used not only to verify the model but also to identify unique combinations of demographic factors (those that do not fit the model and therefore generate results that differ from those predicted). To run experiments using the proposed computer model, a database was created that formalizes the key parameters of the studied settlements. The authors conclude that a majority of these settlements are undergoing a demo-migration transition – a difficult shift in migration intentions. The model forecasts that most of them are going to eventually disappear as a result of this transition. The remainder will develop into relatively stable communities that balance out-migration with natural population growth. Yet, despite a persistent negative net migration, the actual decline in the rural population and the disappearance of settlements proceeded less fast during the study period than the model predicted. The authors propose a hypothesis that the realization of migration intentions is less likely possible as the rural population approaches the optimum size required for modern farming methods. In conclusion, the authors emphasize the importance of applying new technologies, including remote sensing, to the study of natural, historical, and socio-economic factors shaping the development of rural settlements.
Historical informatics. 2025;(3):151-172
151-172
A Review of the Application of Self-Organized Criticality Theory in Historical and Socio-Political Research
摘要
This article reviews empirical and theoretical studies conducted over the past three decades that apply the approaches and tools of self-organized criticality (SOC) theory to research in the fields of history, political science, and sociology. The expansion of SOC into the social sciences and humanities reflects a demand for methodological frameworks capable of addressing research problems related to fundamental issues of complexity and instability. Originating in the natural sciences, SOC has evolved into a meta-disciplinary paradigm. Its integration into historical and socio-political research has given rise to a distinct line of inquiry that has not only demonstrated the applicability of the theory to the analysis of social systems but also revealed its considerable heuristic value. The expansion of SOC theory is an episode in a large and long-term interdisciplinary dialogue involving many ideas. This review analyzed the subject matter of this line of inquiry, highlighting the stages of its development from its initial emergence and outlining its key theoretical contributions. Special attention was paid to the design and heuristic potential of major studies. The reviewed literature typically identifies SOC patterns in empirical data—both historical and contemporary—and formulates hypotheses based on SOC models and universal explanatory frameworks. Where supported, these studies contribute to the advancement of domain-specific knowledge. SOC models play a heuristically significant role in this theory. They are the source of hypotheses and explanatory schemes, which are then tested for compliance with empirical data. At the center of the SOC theory is the “sand pile” model, which simulates all the key provisions of this concept. Several studies demonstrate that phenomena such as punctuated equilibrium and abrupt crises are characteristic of social systems exhibiting SOC behavior.
Historical informatics. 2025;(3):173-205
173-205
The History of High-Rise Construction in Moscow: Interdisciplinary Understanding and Geoinformational Analysis
摘要
The article contains the results of a historical and geographical study using geographic information methods, focused on the spatial dynamics of high-rise construction in Moscow in the 20th and 21st centuries. The aim of the research is to identify the spatial patterns of high-rise construction development in Moscow and to provide an interdisciplinary understanding of this phenomenon by applying geoinformation technologies. The subject of the research is high-rise construction in Moscow in its historical transformation in the context of the formation of a visual urbanized environment. In this work, high-rise buildings are understood as residential and public structures with a minimum height of 100 meters. High-rise constructions for cult and technical purposes were not considered. The research is based on open databases on building construction in Moscow over different years, urban planning documents, literary sources, and statistical materials. The main research methods selected in this work are historical-geographical, historical-statistical, and geoinformation, specifically the method of computer cartography using the QGIS geographic information system. As a result of the research, spatial-temporal patterns of the concentration of high-rise construction in different parts of Moscow have been identified. These patterns are visualized through a series of authorial maps for the periods of high-rise construction. A ranking of districts and administrative areas of Moscow has been compiled based on the number of high-rise buildings. The role of high-rise construction in shaping the visual environment of Moscow, which has changed under the influence of socio-economic conditions, advancements in engineering and technical solutions, changes in urban planning policy, and the increasing prestige of Moscow as one of the largest megacities in the world, has been interpreted on an interdisciplinary level. The novelty of the research lies in demonstrating the effectiveness of the geoinformation mapping method using the QGIS geographic information system for visualizing and conducting interdisciplinary analysis of the spatial dynamics of high-rise construction in Moscow. This has made it possible to compare various stages of high-rise construction, identify areas of the most intense high-rise development, and determine the most significant factors that influenced changes in the urban landscape and visual environment of the Moscow metropolis. The practical significance consists in improving the methodology of applied historical-geographical research carried out using computer cartography technologies.
Historical informatics. 2025;(3):206-222
206-222
Physicists about Lyricists: work of the House of Culture of IAE named after I. V. Kurchatov in the materials of the newspaper "Soviet Physicist"
摘要
The article analyzes materials from the mass newspaper of the I. V. Kurchatov Institute, "Soviet Physicist," dedicated to the work of the main cultural and recreational venue of the institute – the club (later the House of Culture of the Kurchatov Institute, currently the House of Scientists named after Academician A. P. Alexandrov of the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute"). The aim of the study is to analyze the repertoire of events at the House of Culture, identify the most popular activities among staff and administration at different periods, assess the relationship with ideological and political-educational work, determine the age composition of visitors and the main formats of work with each age group, and trace the connection between the institute's cultural venue and the labor union organization. The chronological framework of the study is determined by the period of newspaper publication and covers the years 1968–1991 of the House of Culture's activities. The study utilized the MAXQDA program for computerized analysis of newspaper materials, and for visualizing the results, UCINET and NETDRAW programs were used. The analysis results demonstrated a relatively stable diversity of themes throughout the studied period. The most requested activities were related to literature, holidays, musical concerts, film screenings, and meetings with figures from cinema and television, while dance events turned out to be the least popular. The House of Culture was a significant cultural venue for employees, with mentions of its activities appearing in almost every second issue of the mass newspaper. The privileged status of physicists in Soviet society, especially those involved in the atomic project, influenced the organization and variety of cultural leisure for the institute's staff. The Kurchatov Club is an example of a unique cultural space that became a place for dialogue between "physicists and poets," a platform where both renowned artists performed and representatives of new creative directions began their journeys. The main audience of the House of Culture consisted of middle-aged people – institute employees, but some events were designed for their families (children) as well as the veteran community. Lectures were the main tool of ideological and political-educational work, with youth as their primary audience. The findings allow for the enrichment of the history of the Kurchatov Club as the main cultural and recreational venue of the Kurchatov Institute, tracing the main trends in cultural and recreational and cultural-educational work during the period from 1968 to 1991.
Historical informatics. 2025;(3):223-240
223-240
“Digital Humanities 2025” in Lisbon: accessibility, citizenship and pavo cristatus
摘要
The article presents the observations of the Digital Humanities 2025 congress, which took place in Lisbon. The Digital Humanities Congress is held annually by the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO). Digital humanities is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. The role and importance of historical issues in this interdisciplinary field is growing every year. In 2025, even the keynote presentation was devoted to the use of digital technologies in historical research. The annual ADHO Digital Humanities Conference is the central and largest event of the international Digital Humanities community that brings together scholars from all over the world, providing them with an opportunity to exchange ideas and research results, as well as promoting future collaboration. The article pays special attention to the historical issues presented at the congress, both in section sessions and poster presentations. Brief observations are presented on the key features of the development of DH. In 2025, one can notice a continuing trend towards an increase in historical papers at the congress – interest in historical sources, historical resources, and issues of virtual reconstruction of the past is growing. The theme of the 2025 conference – “Accessibility and Citizenship” – emphasizes two interrelated principles of the DH-community today. The principle of accessibility means the intentional elimination of all possible barriers (technical, economic, linguistic, educational) to the creation, use, distribution and understanding of digital humanities projects, in fact, it is an ethical foundation that transforms DH from an elite research practice into a tool for truly open, inclusive and democratic collaboration with cultural heritage and the humanities. If accessibility is a prerequisite, then citizenship is the next step to active, conscious, responsible and transformative participation in the digital space based on this accessibility.
Historical informatics. 2025;(3):241-256
241-256