Abstract: The subject of this article is the history of the development and application of prosopography in historical research. The author proposes a periodization of the history of prosopography - a research method and an interdisciplinary direction of research (an auxiliary applied discipline). Particular attention is paid to the criteria for identifying the periods of development of prosopography and the history of the emergence of analytical (quantitative) prosopography, its source database, research methods and features of research. The source of useful materials is an extensive complex of materials collected by the author over the past 30 years. More than 5,000 publications on prosopographic studies carried out by foreign and russian historians in the period from the infection of the 19th century until now have been collected. The main research methods used by the author in this work are the historical-comparative and historical-chronological methods, the method of analyzing historiographic sources used at different times to create and analyze information from prosopographic databases; the results of their processing, including the interpretation of income in the past development, as well as the presentation of prosopographic projects on the Internet and the use of modern information technologies. The scientific novelty of the study is carried out in the original classical periodization of prosopographic studies, combining foreign and domestic historiography of prosopography and studying it as the only premise.

Keywords: historical information, historical research, information technology, prosopographic databases, historiographical sources, criteria, periodization, prosopography, context approach, factoid approach

Abstract: The database "Dissertations on Urban History" was created in order to study the trends in the development of Russian historiography in the field of historical urban studies in 1991-2021. The source of information for the database is the electronic catalog of academic researches (dissertations) of the Russian State Library, posted on the official website of the organization www.rsl.ru. More than 25 thousand dissertation researches were made during this period. 523 dissertations were selected by expert means, whose topics corresponded to the field of urban history. For further work, an electronic database was created, including 6 bibliographic and 7 analytical attributes. To analyze the database, an approach was applied based on calculating the frequency of occurrence of individual keywords characterizing each of the following attributes: author, title of the work, year, code of scientific specialty, academic degree, chronological period, territorial scope, scale of research optics, thematic direction. According to the results of the work carried out, it was possible to establish that despite some conjunctural similarities with the Western tradition, Russian authors are distinguished by increased attention to the historical period of the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries, academic research focus on the problems of social history.

Keywords: dissertator, information resource, historical science, dynamics of dissertation defenses, database of dissertations, bibliographic database, historical urbanism, quantitative historiography, urban history, dissertation

Abstract: One of the actual problems of Byzantine studies is the estimation of the size of the Genoese trading community of Constantinople, which played a critical role in the fate of late Byzantium. To solve this problem the historian A.L. Ponomarev proposed to use mathematical methods based on data from indirect sources - notarial deeds preserved in the State Archives of Genoa. These deeds were drawn up to fix commercial transactions, agreements on the creation of commercial partnerships, the hiring of ships, wills, the purchase and sale of houses, goods and people. In addition to the obligatory mention in the deed form of the names of the contracting parties and witnesses to the transaction, it may also, depending on its type, contain the names of guardians, recipients of the will and other third parties. Thus, these data on the clientele of Genoese notaries represent a rather impressive and valuable array of information, which may indirectly indicate the size of the entire trading Genoese community of Byzantium. To solve this problem, the author of this paper draws on the ideas and methods of the theory of random placements, which is an intensively developing area of mathematical statistics. It is based on constructing a linear estimate of the value and assumes a random sample. The result obtained is compared with the estimate from the previous paper by the author, which is based on another method of mathematical statistics and is quite close to the value of A.L. Ponomarev - 688 people.

Keywords: Constantinople, Genoese, notarial deeds, frequency of occurrence, ranged series, statistical estimation, sample, size of a finite population, linear estimate, random placement

Abstract: In connection with the implementation of the project for the preservation of cultural and historical heritage associated with the creation and reconstruction of the Trans-Siberian railway, the authors of this article propose a technology for constructing three–dimensional cartographic images and its implementation on the example of one of the most famous sections of the Trans-Siberian Railway - the Tarmanchukan tunnel, which is one of the longest in the world. The purpose of this work is to build a 3D map of the tunnel using the Prism3D game engine. The article describes in detail the basic principles of building 3D models and 3D maps, describes the procedure for step-by-step creation of a 3D map of the Tarmanchukan tunnel with high detail and texture. The created product is, in fact, a virtual reality object, the closest possible copy of the original. To use it, there is no need to use a special helmet, it is enough to use the interface of the recommended programs. The high level of detail of the model allows you to get complete information about the object being modeled, including small details. As a result of the presented work, the most realistic map of one of the most famous tunnels in the world – Tarmanchukansky - was obtained. At the same time, the geographical features of the relief and landscape are fully reflected on the 3D map itself, access and viewing of which will soon be possible on the website of the Faculty of History of Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Keywords: Trans - Siberian Railway, Prism3D platform, three-dimensional cartographic model, 3D game engines, spatial historical data, 3D mapping technology, Tarmanchukan Tunnel, GIS technologies, project, map

Abstract: The article presents architectural history of the building of the Moscow English Club, located in the center of Moscow on Tverskaya Street using the methods of three-dimensional modeling. The object of study is an object of cultural heritage, which during its history used to be a city estate, a noble club and now is a museum. Features of its location, historical events, socio-cultural context and change of purpose have influenced both the external design of the building and its internal structure. The author identifies and analyzes causes of changes in the architecture of the building, summarizes information from archival sources, identifies inaccuracies and contradictions that are found in documents. Based on materials from the funds of the Schusev State Museum of Architecture, the Central State Archive of Moscow and published sources, the author systematized the architectural history of the building and information about its owners. The data on the reconstruction of the building, based on the comparison of drawings and explanations to them, applications and projects, sketches and site plans, were shown in the scheme. For 3D visualization in 3Ds max six time periods were chosen: 1830s, 1875, 1883, 1896, 1912, 1940s. Agisoft PhotoScan and Adobe Photoshop were also used in the work.

Keywords: Moscow English club, cultural heritage, three-dimensional modeling, 3Ds max, Historical Information Science, historical virtual reconstruction, verification, archival sources, city manor, history of Moscow

Abstract: Political terror was a distinctive phenomenon of the Soviet era, affecting broad segments of the population of the USSR. In addition to the official traditional sources on the history of this period (statistics, personal files of prisoners, court materials, periodicals), sources of personal origin play an important role – diaries, letters, interviews and memoirs of prisoners of camps and special settlers. Of particular interest among other sources of personal origin on the history of repression in the USSR are collections of memoirs of the repressed. The largest collection of memoirs is presented on the resource of the Sakharov Center "Memories of the Gulag and their authors". The texts of memoirs posted on this electronic resource have become the main source of this research. Based on the materials of the resource, a full-text thematic collection of memoirs was created and analyzed using the methods of content analysis, network analysis and statistical analysis. A comparative analysis of the reflection of camp life on the pages of memoirs of male and female prisoners is carried out. The analysis suggests that men and women converge in the fundamental aspects of the perception of camps: regardless of gender, the camp stage of life became the most traumatic and was remembered by former prisoners in similar tones. At the same time, neither the gender of the authors of the memoirs, nor the profession, nor the age at the time of arrest, nor the number of years that prisoners were forced to spend in camps globally affect these general perception trends. There are particular features inherent in individual subgroups, both among women and men, of the perception of camps, but in general the perception is the same, and it is the general features of the perception of camp life that are brought to the fore, overshadowing the particular elements. This can serve as a confirmation of the thesis that the collection of memoirs collected and studied in the framework of this study is a mass source.

Keywords: gender, repression, prisoners, GULAG, mass sources, sources of personal origin, methods, gender studies, content analysis, memoirs

Abstract: The article describes various approaches to the classification of occupations in historical research, using the example of the database "Victims of political terror in the USSR". A brief overview of the methods by which this problem was previously solved is given: from manual assignment of certain occupations and professions of the repressed to different social groups that existed in the 1930s in the USSR, to automatic clustering. Further, a new method is proposed: to apply supervised machine learning for classification: use records already divided into groups during the author’s previous studies for training the algorithm and automatic labeling. The best of the tested methods turned out to be the support vector machine, which showed an accuracy of 95% on the test sample. The advantages and limitations of such a classification are considered, with the main limitation appears to be that some social groups are systematically defined more poorly. Nevertheless, the application of this technique made possible to mark up 350 thousand new records from the database extremely quickly. Markup based on the "training" data processed by the historian appears to be a promising direction for historical data science.

Keywords: machine learning, USSR, Russian history, historical data science, data markup, historical data bases, Stalinism, support vector machine, political terror, classification

Abstract: This article describes the continuation of the initiative of the editorial board of the journal "Historical Informatics" – a discussion club in which researchers can make reviews of current publications related to the field of interests of historical informatics. The article considers the "main character" of the next online meeting of the discussion club - the collective monograph "Information. Historical Companion" ("Information. A Historical Companion”). Recently, there has been an obvious interest in the interpretation of the concept of "information" in historiography, including in the historical context. Various dictionaries, anthologies and monographs on the "history of information" are becoming frequent novelties of leading international publishers.   The authors of the book "Information. Historical Companion" call their work the first in which such issues are considered comprehensively and in detail, with an attempt to trace global changes in information practices and technologies, although such an optimistic author's self-assessment can be doubted. The main structural elements of the collective monograph-dictionary are considered. The approach chosen by the authors is analyzed in the context of current historiography and various, sometimes competing definitions of the concept of information. L.I.Borodkin, I.M.Garskova, Yu.Yu.Yumasheva, D.S.Voronkova took part in the discussion club meeting, A.Y.Volodin moderated the discussion.

Keywords: historical companion, keywords, knowledge, data, information, information history, discussion club, historical informatics, information theory, Shannon

Abstract: In the times of the data revolution, there is an urgent need to address numerous issues on how ongoing transformations of everyday life are influencing society and historians who study it. Thus, publications like “Information: A Historical Companion” are very important as they give our academic community a basis for a discussion on new possible theoretical and methodological backgrounds of historical research. However, while this book contains a range of diversified studies and deep reflections on information and the evolution of its sources, we wonder why among related notions like “data” and “knowledge” there was no place for such a core concept as the “information hierarchy”. Thus, we would like to raise a question on the role of the “DIKW-model” for history and to demonstrate how it could help to solve a common problem in the misuse of terminology. This opinion piece is a part of publications following the meeting dedicated to a discussion of the book “Information: A Historical Companion” organized by the “Historical Informatics” journal on October 26, 2021.

Keywords: information hierarchy, DIKW model, history, information, data, knowledge, data revolution, theoretical background, methodology of historical research, book review

Abstract: The article is a summary of the content of the speech in the framework of the discussion of the book “Information: A Historical Companion”, which took place on the YouTube channel of the Association "History and Computer". The author analyzes the relevance of the topic of the book (the study of the history of the creation and dissemination of information in the historical past), its structure and content, the object and subject of research reflected in the articles of the authors of essay articles; chronological and territorial boundaries of the consideration of this topic; the source base and historiography that formed the basis of the articles in the collection, as well as the research methodology and factography presented in the book.As a result of the analysis, it is concluded that the authors of the articles included in the book adhere to the methodology of presentism, transferring modern ideas to the historical past, and in general, this book can be classified as a genre of "factoid historiography" based on unreliable facts or inaccurate interpretations, "convenient" for constructing the "necessary" concept of the development of the historical process for the authors of the book.

Keywords: information, historiography, information technology, historiographic sources, communications, information networks, presentism, factoid, ientific criticism, History

Abstract: The article reflects the author's speech in the discussion club of the journal "Historical Informatics" at a meeting dedicated to the discussion of the collective monograph "Information. A Historical Companion", published in 2021 at Princeton. The author examines not only the history of the functioning and evolution of information in various historical societies, but also the social history of science and technology related to the production of information and its transmission, dissemination and processing. It is this second aspect of this publication that is discussed in the article, it is he who is of the greatest interest in the context of modern applications of Data Science in the social sciences and humanities, as well as discussions about historical information and historical knowledge in the "digital age". Starting from the materials of the Companion, the article discusses the following questions: What role did discrete and analog approaches play in the formation of the concept of information in the late 1940s? What was the mutual influence of the outstanding scientists who created the theory of information? To what extent can these achievements be of interest to the historical (and, more broadly, the humanities) sciences? The position of the authors of the Companion is also discussed on the question of whether the concepts of "information" and "knowledge" should be associated with the position of the historian-researcher or with the perception of the subject of historical research? Peter Burke's point of view seems justified here, believing that throughout the centuries under consideration, people belonging to various historical societies were aware of information as a critical aspect of their lives.

Keywords: communications, entropy, historical society, cybernetics, the digital age, knowledge, Shannon, Wiener, information theory, information