DOI: 10.7256/2585-7797.2023.3.43744

Abstract: The article examines the structure of income and the level of material well-being of scientists in 1925. The source base of the study is represented by the primary materials of the budget survey, which covered 16 cities of the USSR, including Moscow, Leningrad, Voronezh, Krasnodar, Novocherkassk, Perm, Rostov, etc. Total 282 forms of budgets of scientific workers – university professors, academic and museum workers, librarians, etc. have been preserved in the archive. The information from the budget form makes it possible to characterize various aspects of the life of scientists under the NEP, including income and consumption. The information from the survey forms was systematized in a database and became the basis for studying the standard of living of various categories of scientists depending on their status and place of residence (capital/province). Budgetary data allow us to conclude that the position of scientists has noticeably worsened in comparison with the pre-revolutionary period. This manifested itself, firstly, in an increase in the workload due to the growth of labor standards at the main place of work and the spread of “part-time jobs” (more than half of the surveyed worked additionally in 1-2 places, had a private practice and other sources of income); secondly, in a noticeable decrease in the income level of the bulk of scientific workers who were not included in the "special" lists. The average monthly salary of a scientist at the main place of work is characterized by a high level of variability and was higher than the average salary of a worker in Moscow. High variability testifies to the processes of differentiation of scientists in terms of income, which depended on the status characteristics of a scientist, his activity, creating prerequisites for the selection of elite categories of scientists, in the 1930s. formed into a hierarchical system of teaching staff with an appropriate set of privileges.

DOI: 10.7256/2585-7797.2020.4.34619

Abstract: The article examines the transformation of the life cycle of a peasant family in Russia in the 20th century in demographical transition circumstances aggravated by multiple demographical catastrophes. The information basis of the study is databases formed during the analysis of budget surveys of peasant farms in the Middle Urals in 1928/1929 and 1963. Supplemented by information from other sources (materials from the population censuses of 1926, 1939 and 1959), these data allowed the authors to compare the family structure of the rural population of the Urals in the 1920s and the 1960s (the initial and the final stage of the demographical transition) and characterize its dynamics (the life cycle). Whereas in a traditional society the life cycle of a peasant family was largely determined by the dynamics of the peasant economy development, the urbanized society witnesses two standards of the family (two-parent/single parent one) with the corresponding types of the life cycle: the nuclear family (the reference version) and the incomplete family (the reduced version). The consequences of the Soviet modernization contributed to the transformation of fragmented forms of the family into a typical variant of the family landscape not only in urban but also in rural areas. Modeling and analysis of the peasant family life cycle at the micro level made it possible to identify the mechanisms of the peasant family adaptation to external and internal challenges that are characteristic of different stages of the demographic transition.

DOI: 10.7256/2585-7797.2019.3.30681

Abstract: The article considers theoretical and methodological aspects of the digital turn in Russian historical science, defines the notion “digital turn” and describes its connection to the digital revolution. The digital revolution in history has primarily affected its methodological, source-related, thematic, and conceptual aspects. The author characterizes the key stages in the digital turn in history: the preliminary stage (mathematization); the initial stage (computerization); and the final stage (informatization of history).  She studies digital turn peculiarities related to specific research areas taking historiography of peasant budget surveys as an example. The history of agriculture and rural life was among the first to join the processes of mathematization and computerization and illustrates the main stages of the digital turn, in particular its final stage that is the creation of remote resources. The informatization of science should be considered not only as a technological process but, since it involves a significant expansion of the range of methodological tools, as a new qualitative level in historical cognition.