Abstract: The active growth of the use of information technologies has affected the methodology of historiographical research. This article uses the social network modeling technology for the analysis of the Russian historiography of the 2010s, devoted to various aspects of the Mari Territory and local Mari groups’ history. The information capabilities of the Scientific Electronic Library eLIBRARY.RU which contains the RSCI bibliographic database were used to achieve this aim. A selection of scientific papers on the studied subject matter was formed on the stated resource portal. It includes 627 articles from journals and conference proceedings authored by more than 270 experts in historical and related disciplines. From all the articles a pool of highly cited publications was identified, including 72 scientific papers, on the basis of which a network graph was created in the Gephi program, which allowed to visualize the connections between selected papers. The automated graph stacking helped to make 13 large clusters of publications as well as a number of "peripheral" publications. The article describes in detail the methods and technologies used in the research conduction, shows the general description of the identified "topography" of the stated subject area and its development trends, and describes the most popular research topics at the present stage. The study is novel in that it uses citation data to identify and analyze the structure of communication in this subject area. The conducted social network analysis of the scientific literature has shown that the considered subject area of modern Russian historiography demonstrates a pronounced progress in its development, as evidenced by a significant thematic expansion of research, a large and geographically wide of authors’ corpus, the involvement of a number of new historical sources, the use of new research approaches, as well as significant grant support for research.

Keywords: mari local studies, Great Patriotic World, forestry, archeology, cluster, oriented graph, Gephi program, network analysis, historiography, Mari region

Abstract: This article deals with the domestic interregional cash flows in the Russian Empire, which flowed in the opposite direction to the flows of commodities and services; thus, they can be used as proxies of the resource allocation and uneven development of regions. This study is based on the statistics of transfers between branches of the State Bank of the Russian Empire, and it conducts a network and geoinformation analysis for 1868, 1878, 1888, and 1898. The study proves that the top segment of the payment network, including ties with St. Petersburg and Moscow, was organized like a “double star” (i.e., a star-type network with centers in two capitals with a huge flow between them). From St. Petersburg, the largest proportion of payments for goods and services were dispersed throughout the country, while Moscow was primarily a nationwide center for buying goods or receiving payments. The metropolitan segment always serviced more than half of all settlements in the country. In the European part of the empire, the largest regional ties (beyond the capitals) looked like the flows in the “pre-railway” period (1868); then, the largest flows were redistributed along the principal railways (1878); later, the flows compressed during the depression (1888); and then, the intraregional (local) flows increased sharply due to the expansion of local railroads (1898). Large interregional flows in the Asian part of the empire were inferior in size to those in the European part; until the 1890s, their main axis was the ties between Tomsk and Irkutsk as well as access to Nizhny Novgorod in the European part (through Yekaterinburg from the 1870s onwards). In the 1890s, new segments appeared in the Far East, in the Steppe Region (Kazakhstan), and in Central Asia.

Keywords: geoinformation analysis, regional financial markets, network analysis, regional financial centers, historical statistics, commodity-money flows, interregional payments, bank transfers, commercial banking, Russian Empire

Abstract: The article examines the financial system of the Russian Empire in the form of money flows between the largest centers, implying that these flows were opposite to the flows of goods and services. The resource allocation pattern is thus revealed in aspects of the markets’ geography and hierarchy, which clarifies the capacity of the financial system to support economic growth. The source for this study is the statistics of the commercial transfers of the State Bank of the Russian Empire for 1898 (excluding treasury transfers), processed through network and geoinformation analysis. The study results show that the highest level of the payment network in the financial system topology of the Russian Empire was located around St. Petersburg and Moscow, which indicates a strong centralization of national money flows. To a great degree, Moscow was a nationwide wholesale center for the sale of goods and services, while St. Petersburg developed into the principal center for resource allocation throughout the country, implying various forms of investment in the economy. In such a centralized system, there was no great need for second-level interregional ties. For regional payment networks (the third level, around Odessa, Warsaw, Kiev, Riga, Baku, Nizhniy Novgorod, Kharkov, and Rostov-on-Don), closer and more intensive financial ties are revealed in the west, in the Odessa-Kiev-Warsaw “triangle”, which indicates a greater saturation of the western and southwestern regions with financial resources.

Keywords: commercial banking, bank transfers, interregional payments, interregional money flows, historical statistics, financial centers, regional financial markets, network analysis, geoinformation analysis, Russian Empire

Abstract: The article searches for and analyzes stable scientific discourse patterns within the subject area named by means of bibliometric tools. To achieve this goal it uses analytical opportunities provided by the Scientific Electronic Library eLIBRARY.RU. Its platform has a selection of Russian research papers studying virtual reconstructions of historical and cultural heritage objects. The author has selected a pool of highly cited works and by means of Gephi software has created an oriented graph that provided for visualizing the links between the selected works, identifying "sub-subject" areas and finding their interaction and mutual influence within this research domain. The research novelty is the use of citation data to identify and analyze the structure of communications in this subject area. As a result, the article clarifies and supplements the existing typology of this research field. The author has distinguished seven relatively independent types of virtual reconstruction technologies use in history and has identified the leading research teams affiliated with Moscow State University, Siberian Federal University, Novosibirsk State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Moscow Institute of Architecture and Center for Virtual History of Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It is these research groups whose papers have had a significant theoretical and methodological influence on other authors in the process of formation and development of this research domain and thus confirmed their scientific value.

Keywords: historical information science, Gephi programm, network analysis, bibliometry, virtual archaeology, typology of virtual reconstructions, virtual museums, scientific communication, historical and cultural heritage, virtual reconstructions

Abstract: The article analyzes money flows associated with agricultural products exports from Orlovskaya Guberniya which help the authors to trace the geography of incomes from interregional trade and conclude about the economic changes in this agrarian region. The source base is statistics of interregional bank transfers, loans against goods transported by railways and bills of exchange with the payment outside the guberniya. These statistics refer to the Oryol Commercial Bank and the Oryol and Yelets branches of the State Bank of the Russian Empire in 1868, 1878, 1888 and 1898. Network and spatial analysis are applied to these data. To interpret the results the authors use narrative sources telling about the economical state of Orlovskaya Gubernia. The study concludes that the Riga-Oryol railway that assigned the gubeniya the interregional trade status partially lost its importance in 1890 as far as exports from the Black Earth Region are concerned. This led to more diversified form of profits based on agricultural products trade. Big money flows from St. Petersburg and Moscow can be explained not only by payment for goods but also by broader ties of the guberniya with the capitals. The latter fact requires further study. Exports to the southern regions of European Russia were less important and those to the east were negligible. In the 1890s many new interregional railways stimulated sharp trade increase within the Central Black Earth Region, but this phenomenon of regional development has also been poorly studied.

Keywords: Russian Empire, trade in agricultural products, commodity-money flows, interregional payments, the State Bank of the Russian Empire, joint-stock commercial banks, Oryol Governorate, historical statistics, network analysis, spatial analysis

Abstract: The article studies the interactions of the Chief Designers’ Council members by the network analysis method based on the prosopographic database covering the creators of Soviet cosmonautics. Personal contacts of cosmonautics creators were undoubtedly very important in the activities of senior managers of such a complex scientific and engineering industry as the Soviet cosmonautics was. These are professional relations of the Chief Designers’ Council members the article addresses. The source base of the research is the materials library of the Russian State Archive of scientific and technical documentation, the Russian State Public History Library, the Russian State Archive of scientific and technical documentation, the funds of the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics and the archive of the Memorial House Museum of academician Sergey Korolev. The research novelty is the goal set to study professional communications of the Soviet space program creators on the basis of network analysis as well as the first attempt to collect and process a large array of texts of biographical and memoir sources (5500 abridged pages) associated with the Chief Designers’ Council using a set of quantitative methods. The main results of this study are networks of interactions that show who of the members of the 1946-1967 Chief Designers’ Council had a significant impact on the development of the Soviet cosmonautics and how communication links were distributed between them.

Keywords: incidence matrix, matrix of relationships, prosopographic database, network analysis, professional communications, spacecraft, Chief Council, cosmonautics, single-module matrix, two-modal matrix

Abstract: The article discusses how the factions in Moscow Zemstvo and Perm Zemstvo assemblies were formed in the first three years of their activity since zemstvos were founded in the second half of the 19th century. These zemstovs have been chosen in order to compare the political structure of the local government both in the capital and in provinces as well as to evaluate the factor of proximity to the imperial institutions and political processes. Both zemstvos directed the life of their economically developed guberniyas, were “active” and their experience was transferred across Russia due to its fruitful results. Social networks inform about glasnye (deputies) who led discussions as well as the decision making process and zemstvos work. As a result, one can find universal and specific features of deputies’ political fragmentation. The research methodology is the network approach and the social network analysis which provided for simulating interaction structures, identifying deputy groups and analyzing them. The authors have studied all journals of Moscow and Perm Zemstvos regular and emergency meetings held during the first three-year period of their activity and have singled out specific discussions. To study personal links they have collected auxiliary data sets providing information about deputies’ personal participation as well as the issues discussed. The study is the first to group glasnye, analyze their cliques and compare peculiar features of zemstvo meetings understudy. In general, the social network analysis supports the idea that personal activity at zemstvo meetings was more effective than the group one at the initial stage. This is supported by the voting results analysis as well. The formation of factions was also greatly hindered by social and political views of zemstvo members.

Keywords: Perm province, Moscow province, liberalism, conservatism, social history, political history, local self-government, Zemstvo, social network analysis, historical sociology

Abstract: The article studies commodity-money flows in the Central Black Earth Region in the second half of the 19th century. To do this Network and geoinformation analysis are applied to the statistics of interregional payments of the Oryol Commercial Bank in 1874–1901. These statistics characterize, firstly, bank clients’ payments related to commodity sales to other regions (goods secured loan payments and bill discounting payments) and, secondly, clients’ payments for goods from other regions (transfers with locations stated). The network structure and geography of these commodity-money flows were analyzed in detail at three time points: 1874, the initial period, economically favorable for the region; 1885, the economic crisis in the area; and 1901, the last year when such payment statistics were published. The article concludes that commodity-money flows of the Central Black Earth Region served by the Oryol Commercial Bank were directed towards westward commodity railway exports. Initially it was Riga and Koenigsberg and by 1901 - many other settlements in western regions and along the western border of the Russian Empire near the railway. Backward commodity-money flows related to the import of goods into the Central Black Earth Region came from all the principal commercial and industrial centers of the Russian Empire. Such a commodity exchange model correlates well with the agricultural specificity of the Central Black Earth Region.

Keywords: Black Earth Region, Russian Empire, agriculture, agricultural trade, commodity-money flows, interregional payments, joint-stock commercial banks, statistical analysis, network analysis, geoinformation analysis

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 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 scientometrically analyses papers published under the aegis of the History and Computer Association (HCA) for a period of its 25 years from 1992 to 2016. The main research domains, as well as schools of thought and historical computer science centers, their specific character and cooperation come under review. The article is the first of two dealing with historiography network analysis. It studies the dynamics of HCA network composition and structure at the level of regional groups. The study is based on the information system developed by the author that includes a bibliographic database of HCA published papers and full-text dataset of articles and reports presented at Association’s conferences. The method employed in the network analysis. The novelty of the study is the first attempt to study thematic historiography by means of network analysis (SocialNetworkAnalysis – SNA). The results allowed the author to see the specific character of small groups of authors developing a specific field as well as larger groups which are more stable due to their multi-dimensional “profiles” The technique offered is considered promising for historiographic research.

Keywords: scientometrics, historiography, bibliography, network analysis, historical information science, association, database, Information system, regional centers, schools of thought

Abstract: The article addresses the issues of network analysis within historical studies. It is a comparatively new trend to modernize techniques and methodology of history (though sociology has been considering this approach as one of the main ones starting with 1950s). The article discusses the specific character of network analysis within historical studies which can bee seen in the problems set, source structure peculiarities and methods of their analysis. Such studies have been carried out within the framework of Historical Network Analysis. The theoretical basis for the network analysis is a mathematical theory of networks (a branch of graph theory) proving the formal apparatus for describing the graph links, its clusters and nodes. The goals of micro and macro analysis of history oriented networks are set for the first time. The task to find networks of individuals on the basis of historical texts (ego type documents) is a special research issue. The article focuses on the projects dealing with the network analysis of the structure of Russian medieval political and polemical texts (when the problems of their attribution are being solved) as well as migration flows in Russia in the first quarter of the 20th c.

Keywords: network analysis, graph theory, relation matrix, microanalysis, macroanalysis, attribution of medieval texts, migration flows, aggregation, algorithm, social networks