The experience of computerized content analysis of articles of the journal "Bulletin of Finance, Industry and Trade" for 1917

Voronkova Dar'ya Sergeevna PhD Candidate, Section of Historical Informatics, History Department, Lomonosov Moscow State University 119192, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Lomonosovskii Prosp., 27 korp.4, kab. G-432 dasevo@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

The article is devoted to the results of a computerized content analysis of the articles of the journal "Bulletin of Finance, Industry and Trade" for 1917. The journal is in many ways an indispensable source of economic information, including in the field of state financial policy, international trade, taxation, etc.

In the revolutionary year 1917, the pages of the magazine reflected the economic processes taking place in Russia against the background of the ongoing World War.

Content analysis is a well-established and at the same time promising method of historical research (including periodical printing has been studied with its help for a long time and fruitfully) ^[1]. However, the named journal has not previously become the object of content analysis. At the same time, he attracted the attention of historians, and there are new works in which he is a source base ^{[2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7]}.

"Herald..." as a source

One of the defining source characteristics of the mentioned journal is its official status as a printing body of the Ministry of Finance. By 1917, it had been published for 32 years (since 1885, and before that there was a direct predecessor – the Index of Government Orders for the Ministry of Finance, published in 1865-1884). In some sources, the year of the beginning of the publication of the "Bulletin" is indicated in 1883. Perhaps the discrepancies are related to the fact that in 1885 the journal was reorganized. The editorial board received at least formal independence, having been allocated from the staff of the Ministry of Finance, and its budget. Such changes are so important that sometimes 1885 is taken as the year of the magazine's foundation. However, in the process of reorganization, even the editor–in-chief was not replaced - both in the "Index ..." and in the "Bulletin ..." this position was held by A. K. Veselovsky. Let us stop at 1884 as a compromise date for the beginning of the publication of the "Bulletin ...". There are a number of justifications in favor of this version, including articles in the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (https://www.booksite.ru/fulltext/1/001/007/020/20375 .htm; https://www.booksite.ru/fulltext/1/001/007/104/104187.htm ; https://www.booksite.ru/fulltext/1/001/007/020/20375.htm ), as well as bibliographic descriptions of the journal in the RNB (https://www.booksite.ru/fulltext/1/001/007/020/20375.htm – It seems to us that here, with the exception of the first line, in which "Bulletin..." dates from 1865, the ratio of "Index..." and "Bulletin ..." is correctly described) and in the NEB (https://www.booksite.ru/fulltext/1/001/007/020/20375.htm ). It is noteworthy that in the "white" Omsk, a short-term attempt was made to "reanimate" the "Bulletin ...", publishing it once every two weeks. This, in particular, is evidenced by one of the surviving April issues of the "Bulletin ..." for 1919 with the indication: "The journal is published by the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Government." (https://www.booksite.ru/fulltext/1/001/007/020/20375.htm).

The initiator of the publication of the new magazine was initially the Minister of Finance N. H. Bunge, and in fact this event was sanctioned by Emperor Alexander III himself. Article 10 of the "Rules on the taxation of commercial and industrial enterprises with an additional fee (percentage and layout)", approved on January 15, 1885, regulates the procedure for publication in the "Bulletin ..." extracts from minutes of general meetings of joint-stock companies and partnerships, as well as balance sheets and annual reports of such associations ^[8]. The publication was mandatory, besides it was paid. The publication of the "Bulletin..." became a logical continuation of the tax reforms of the 1880s. Being the mouthpiece of government policy, Vestnik ... provided the audience with materials carefully selected by the editorial board (among the authors there are many, in particular, leading economists of their time).

On the website of the publishing house "Budget", quite a lot of attention is paid to the circumstances of the appearance of the "Bulletin ...": "... a new magazine was created, which became known as the "Bulletin of Finance, Industry and Trade". <...> The widespread use of telegraphic communication led in 1894 to the formation of a special telegraph department in the editorial office of the Bulletin. The quality of work, accuracy and timeliness of receipt of commercial and other telegrams caused an ever-growing demand for the services of the department from other periodicals and individuals. After all, although at that time there was already a "Russian Telegraph Agency", it was not engaged in commercial information. Under these conditions, the telegraph department, constantly developing, in 1902 was transformed into a separate institution – the "Trade and Telegraph Agency". The management and management of the agency continued to be carried out by the editorial team of Vestnik, and its editor was appointed director of this organization. The quality of the agency's work was noticed by the press. And soon many periodicals switched to him for information service. Foreign telegraph agencies concluded agreements with him on the exchange of telegrams. In 1904, it was decided to transform the "Trade and Telegraph Agency" into the "St. Petersburg Telegraph Agency".^[9]. Thus, the editorial board of the "Bulletin ..." based its work on the principles and technologies advanced for its time, contributed to the development of the telegraph network and gave rise to the publication of a number of print media, such as the "Trade and Industrial Newspaper" and "Russian Economic Review".

At the end of the quarter, a "Systematic list of articles" was published, but in 1917 only two were published – for the first and second quarters.

Research methodology

As noted above, content analysis is successfully used as a method of analyzing text sources and, in particular, the historical press.

The software that made it possible to carry out a computerized content analysis of the materials of an array of articles from the issues of the "Bulletin ..." of 1917 was the MAXQDA program ^[10]. The work uses the MAXQDA version – MAXQDA 2022.

Development of a system of categories and analysis of their occurrence frequencies

After repeatedly reading the journal articles, converting the source file into recognized electronic text and importing this text into the MAXQDA program, a frequency dictionary was created in the MAXDictio module. Based on the most common words, indicators were identified, which were consolidated into a system of categories. The text is then indexed using the auto-coding option with a dictionary.  Indexing in content analysis is the markup in the text of segments where indicators of the corresponding categories meet. Indexing was based on indicators for which only the root bases of words were set. In total, 14 categories were constructed (all of them, with the exception of the "countries" category, are single-level, and the latter includes opposing and neutral states, and the composition of the corresponding blocks was formed taking into account the realities of 1917, therefore, for example, Italy was on the side of the Entente). A number of the author's articles highlight the most important problems for the journal and analyze their topics ^{[11; 12; 13]}.

The results are presented in the following table (Table 1):

Table 1. Semantic categories of texts and indicator words

The unit of account is the offer, and the unit of analysis is the identified category. Tables of word frequencies have been compiled for the journal as a whole (words that do not carry a semantic load are excluded using a stop list - a list of service words that are not subject to analysis). 

In MAXQDA, it is possible to create a word cloud (visualization of a frequency dictionary), but a cloud of category codes will be more informative for us (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Code cloud

It can be seen that the most common category is "finance", followed by "trade", "industry", "war" and "political sphere". This is also confirmed in dynamics if we present the categories by frequency of occurrence for each quarter of 1917 and display the result in the form of a so-called heat map (with this graphical representation, the warmest shades correspond to the most common categories, and the lower the frequency, the colder the color; Fig. 2):

Fig. 2. Heat map of the frequency of occurrence of categories

The analysis of quarterly indicators is chosen for two reasons. Firstly, if you do not combine the 43 issues of the Bulletin ... into any groups, the final tables will be too cumbersome and difficult to understand. Secondly, if the numbers are combined monthly, there will be a question with a double number 19-20: it is dated May 14 (27) and May 21 (June 3), 1917, which means that, being a single one, it would formally have to fall into different months, and it is impossible and incorrect to separate its materials. Thus, the only option is to combine the numbers into groups of documents by quarter. The first quarter – numbers inclusive from 1 to 13-14 (double), the second – from 15 to 26, the third – from 27 to 38 and the fourth (incomplete) – numbers 39-43. We see that the "finance" category tops the list throughout the year. The "trade" category has been among the main ones for three quarters, and only in the fourth interest in it is noticeably falling, giving second place to the "war" category. For the first quarter, the three categories are closed by "industry", in the second – "trade", in the third – "political sphere" ("industry" at the same time comes in second place), and in the fourth, the last, in which the publication of the magazine ceased, the third place is shared with the political sphere by the category "war". Despite such a wide range of issues discussed on the pages of the magazine, it is possible to outline something in common about why they received such attention. In our opinion, the unifying factor is the search for additional sources of state income, ways to solve the problems of supplying the population, getting out of the gradually escalating transport and fuel crisis and analyzing foreign experience in these areas.

In order to more accurately identify the main categories and work with them in the future, we used a useful tool MAXQDA – "code coverage". This indicator for groups of documents (corresponding to the four quarters of 1917) was 87.6-91.7%. Such high values indicate the completeness of all stages of encoding the source text data. Let's look at the distribution of the frequency of occurrence of categories, provided that the values are rounded to tenths (the "percentage of total text" setting is selected, Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. The frequency of occurrence of categories is calculated using the "code coverage" function

So, we can make the following list of the most common categories for 1917 as a whole:

· "finance" (46.5%);

· "industry" (19.6%);

· "trade" (19.1%);

· "political sphere" (18.0%);

· "war" (17.0%);

· "socio-economic sphere" (14.6%);

· "taxes" (11.8%);

· "legal field" (11.2%).

It is for them that we will calculate and visualize the frequencies of joint occurrence below.

Analysis of the frequency of joint occurrence of categories

 The MAXMaps module, which allows you to build informative graphs, is well suited for visualizing the frequencies of joint occurrence of categories. We are interested in the proximity of the codes (the user himself can set the necessary distance for the text of the document – for example, the fixed codes can be located in neighboring or one or two paragraphs from each other) and the intersection of the codes in the encoded segments. In the constructed graph, the maximum distance between codes in one paragraph is set by the proximity of categories. The result is shown in Fig. 4. The fatness of the lines is an indicator of the high frequencies of the common occurrence of categories, the frequencies themselves are indicated on these lines. The core of the graph consists of those categories between which the strongest connections are.

Fig. 4. Graph of frequencies of joint occurrence of categories by their proximity

All the main categories shown in the graph are closest to the "finance" category. The paired values are as follows:

· "finance" - "political sphere": 6803;

· "finance" - "war": 6152;

· "finance" - trade": 5993;

· "finance" - "industry": 5938;

· "finance" - "socio-economic sphere": 4781;

· "finance" - "legal field": 4662;

· "finance" - "taxes": 3475.

In addition, the strong connection between the categories "trade" and "industry" is noteworthy (4136). Thus, financial issues clearly form the core of the entire content of the "Bulletin ...". They are most strongly associated with the political sphere, as well as the categories "war", "trade" and "industry", while the latter two are expected to be mutually close. MAXQDA helps to identify these hidden relationships. Let's focus on the structure of categories in more detail, analyzing each of the following graphs in Fig. 5-12 (these graphs are constructed based on the intersection of categories; in order not to overload the images, 10 categories intersecting with the central one are shown).

Fig. 5. Graph of co-occurrence frequencies for the category "finance"

Finance for the authors of the "Bulletin ..." – mainly issues of money and check circulation, the budget, the State Bank, the foreign exchange market, etc. This explains the prevalence of links with the categories "political sphere", "trade", "war", "industry". Here is what B. Remez writes about the reasons for the preparation of monetary reform: "During the war under way, as in the previous historical epochs of shocks to the monetary system, quite a lot of articles have already appeared on the issue of the upcoming monetary reform. The original feature of modern projects is that they are mostly aimed not at returning to metal circulation, but at streamlining the existing paper and money economy" ^[14]. Wartime also left its mark on the financial sphere. A. N. Guryev notes on this occasion: "Modern war, with all the complex complex of phenomena generated by it, has already been certified by the whole world as unprecedented, unheard of, without any precedent in history. In accordance with this attestation, all previous views based on historical precedents have been subjected to a decisive revision. Only in one area we still have a historical stencil. This area is the paper and money economy generated by the war" ^[15].

Fig. 6. Graph of co-occurrence frequencies for the category "trade"

Figure 6 shows that the strongest relationship between the category "trade" and the category "finance". There are also noticeable links with the categories "industry", "Entente and allies", "war" and "taxes". The latter two are also not strange in this context: we are talking about the fact that, on the one hand, military spending needs to be replenished with proceeds from trade, and on the other, the question "where to get additional funds?" the authors of the "Bulletin ..." are trying to solve "at the junction" of the trade and tax spheres.

Fig. 7. Graph of co-occurrence frequencies for the category "industry"

The category "industry" (Fig. 7) is closely related to the categories "finance", "trade", "war", somewhat weaker – with socio-economic and political spheres. In general, this is the whole complex of the most important issues that are most closely considered on the pages of the magazine.

Fig. 8. Graph of co-occurrence frequencies for the category "war"

In the case of the frequencies of the joint occurrence of the category "war" with other main categories (Fig. 8), an unobvious result can be noticed. The connection with the category "finance" is also the strongest here (war is always expensive!), followed by the categories "industry", "political sphere", "trade" by a large margin. But the links with the subcategories of countries (which, we recall, are divided into three blocks), although quite naturally bring the Entente and allies to the fore of them, are still not as strong as one might expect. This result reveals hidden information that is difficult to obtain by traditional methods.

It should be noted that, despite the above, the experience of the allies was covered in sufficient detail in the magazine. For example, in the 43rd issue of Vestnik ..., which became the last, there are also reflections on possible measures to restore industrial potential after the war. The article "Building a future economic life in the UK" by its author S. I. Rapoport ends as follows: "But, of course, the syndication of industry does not yet solve the complexity of the issues that will arise with demobilization and with the return to a peaceful working life. These issues occupy more than one government. All circles of society are concerned about them, and in my next articles I will try to give an outline of the views and measures put forward by various prominent figures to resolve them" ^[16]. By the will of fate, this article turned out to be the last for the entire "Bulletin ...".

Fig. 9. Graph of co-occurrence frequencies for the category "political sphere"

Fig. 10. Graph of co-occurrence frequencies for the category "socio-economic sphere"

The categories "political sphere" and "finance" are closely connected. "War" takes the third place, lagging almost 2.5 times, and "industry" and "socio-economic sphere" are even more inferior. What is interesting: "trade" and "legal field" demonstrate smaller, but almost identical frequencies of joint occurrence with the central category in Fig. 9. According to the strength of the connection with the category "socio-economic sphere" (Fig. 10), "finance" is again far ahead of the rest, "industry" takes the second place, and "war" and "political sphere" share the third. Financial problems are also most relevant here.

Fig. 11. Graph of co-occurrence frequencies for the "taxes" category

The category "taxes" includes relevant issues of domestic and foreign taxation practice, as well as the history of the formation and prospects of customs duties. An important article is about planning tax reform. At the very beginning it says: "Currently, the shift of the center of gravity in taxation from indirect taxes to direct taxes is taking rapid steps. The importance of direct taxes is increasing, and at the same time the responsibility of tax inspectors is growing. Many new direct taxes have already been introduced, and several new ones are expected to be introduced in the near future" ^[17]. The frequency of joint occurrence with the category "finance" is the highest, followed by "trade", "political sphere" and "industry", and "war" is not so noticeable.

Reforms are also overdue in the area of urban income distribution. Here is what I.M. Kulisher writes: "The Interim Government has approved a new law on urban finance. A reform has been carried out, which has been talked about for a number of years, which is caused by the urgent needs of city self-government bodies" ^[18].

Fig. 12. Graph of co-occurrence frequencies for the category "legal field"

And finally, the category "legal field". In the graph in Fig. 12, in the first place, as for the other categories, the connection of the "legal field" with "finance".

The "political sphere" is much inferior, "industry", "trade", "socio-economic sphere" show frequencies even less. The "war" is less noticeable than even the "Entente and Allies". Why? The answer is in the very structure of the "legal field" category: the most important thing in it is not emergency laws and bills caused by military conditions, but, for example, the experience of codification of law in France and England. Here is a quote from L. S. Eliasson's article "Issues of codification of check law": "A complete coincidence between law and life can be stated in England and, perhaps, in France. In the first, where the check has reached the greatest distribution, where the popularity of the bank deposit has reached the limits of what is possible, and the law considers the check solely as a method of settlement. But even in France, the check law fully satisfies the needs of the environment for which it is intended, namely the most cultured part of the merchant class. To distribute a check to the people's lowlands, apparently, has never been pursued by banking policy in France" ^[19].

Analysis of the "countries" category

We have built several pie charts that give an idea of the share of country mentions in the main semantic categories (Fig. 13-18):

Fig. 13. The share of mentions of countries in the category "finance"

Figure 14. Shares of country mentions in the "trade" category

Fig. 15. The share of mentions of countries in the category "industry"

Fig. 16. The proportion of mentions of countries in the category "war"

Fig. 17. The share of mentions of countries in the category "political sphere"

Fig. 18. The share of mentions of countries in the category "socio-economic sphere"

In each of the categories, the structure of which is presented in the diagrams, mentions of the Entente and allies are expected to prevail. But still it is possible to note some other features. So, within the "trade" category, neutral countries have a significant share (16.84%). This is not surprising, because in the conditions of military operations, in many respects it was the foreign trade turnover with them that made it possible to find new sources of financing for other sectors of the economy. At the same time, in conditions when any search for new forms of taxation to increase budget revenues became in demand, it is understandable that such a significant proportion of the countries of the opposing bloc – the Triple Alliance (36.88%) – appeared in the "taxes" category, apparently it was considered necessary to analyze the relevant practices of the enemy. In general, the same can be attributed to the category of "legal field": the analysis of legislative initiatives and bills in the camp of the enemy accounts for 31.18% of relevant publications, while the share of neutral countries is the smallest – 7.89%. In the "war" category, the share of the Triple Alliance and its supporters reaches 31.68%. In general, it cannot be said that the "enemy" is forgotten in other categories, on the contrary: in the already mentioned "trade" - almost 24% concern the enemy, in "finance" and even more – 27.82%, in the "political sphere" - 26.32%, in the "socio-economic" - 25.13%, and in the "industry" - more than 30%. All this testifies to the relentless attention on the pages of the "Bulletin ..." to the internal situation in the hostile camp.

Diagrams are also constructed showing, on the contrary, the shares of the main semantic categories in the context of mentions of various blocks of countries (Fig. 19-21):

Fig. 19. Structure of publication categories with references to the Entente

Fig. 20. Structure of publication categories with references to the Triple Alliance

Fig. 21. Structure of publication categories with references to neutral countries

For the Entente and allies, "finance", "trade", "war" and "political sphere" come out on top. Here is a remarkable quote: "The main feature of the English stock market in 1916 is the fact that this activity remained within modest limits and did not distract the English population from the primary financial task - supplying the state with the necessary means for waging war" ^[20].

For the Triple Alliance, the main categories remain the same three, "industry" is promoted to the fourth place (you need to know and analyze the industrial potential of the enemy). In the very first quarter of 1917, a number of comments about the situation in Germany were found in the magazine: "Summing up our review, we can only repeat the opinion that has long been expressed that the war undoubtedly represents great material benefits for some segments of the German population, in particular, for holders of shares of enterprises, one way or another related to work for service" ^{[20, p. 406]}. There is also a contrast in this regard with the sitation in the Entente countries: "While in Germany the plan of financial mobilization and financial warfare has been developed by individuals and institutions for a number of years, served as the subject of detailed discussion, in the countries of consent, only occasional, isolated manifestations of interest in this problem can be noted" ^[21]. One can also see evidence of changes in Russia's domestic financial policy since the beginning of the war: "So, in addition to German and Austrian joint-stock companies admitted to operations in Russia, those Russian companies whose shares or management of affairs were in the hands of enemy subjects were also classified as "suspicious" ^[22].

In the context of reports about neutral countries, the most important category becomes, as we have already seen, "trade", followed by "finance" and "industry", and "war" closes the conditional four with 9.83%. About Sweden: "Taking advantage of the position of a neutral country, Sweden has significantly increased its exports to the belligerent countries" ^[23].

***

Let's note a small article in the tenth issue of the magazine, which is important for understanding the position of the publication in this crucial year. It is about the change in the political system of Russia as a result of the February Revolution: "What will and should be the role of our publication from now on? <...> We invite Russian economists, regardless of their direction and sympathies, to develop proposals and measures to promote the people's government. All reasoned and reasoned opinions to the best of their technical ability will find a place on the pages of our publication. At the same time, of course, we do not mean a political parliament of opinions (after all, the Bulletin of Finance is an economic body), but a discussion of topics by competent people, specialists who find out the truth from various points of view. Our publication will try to become not an exponent of one or another economic program, but a platform for the exchange of opinions, a laboratory for economic thought - of course, primarily not theoretical, but practical.

We would be happy if the formulation and development of such currently important financial and economic issues on the pages of our publication would bring at least a small benefit to the renewing Russia."^[3].

Certain conclusions can be drawn from the above quote. Firstly, the editorial board of the "Bulletin ..." quite predictably declares full commitment to the Provisional Government. Secondly, in this article there is a need to convince readers that the editors and employees have previously faced almost harassment. It is difficult to judge whether this was really the case, but this idea was inspired by the audience: "The editorial board of the Bulletin of Finance is proud that its staff includes prominent Russian scientists, economists and financiers of various currents of progressive political and economic thought. It was not easy for them sometimes when they had to lay down on a procrustean bed. It was also difficult for the editorial office to defend useful and talented works from departmental influences. But, due to the absence of independent economic press bodies in Russia, both employees and editorial staff had to put up with the state of affairs." ^{[24, p. 453]}.

The editorial notes are contained in several more articles of the "Bulletin ...", but the one discussed above most clearly expresses the position of the editorial board of the journal. Frequency analysis in this case is supplemented by a detailed reading – close reading– of the source text.

Conclusion

"Bulletin of Finance, Industry and Trade" is a valuable historical source with a high potential for research and increasing information returns. The computerized content analysis allowed to reveal not only the explicit, but also the hidden layer of information contained in this journal. Despite the fact that, ultimately, the interpretation of the research results is in a certain sense subjective and conditioned by the formulation of the research task, there is no doubt that the text reflects the source of extra-textual reality.

The system of semantic categories built on the basis of the full-text database of journal articles made it possible to supplement the set of headings of the "Systematic Lists" of the journal, as well as the set of keywords, sections and subsections proposed in the bibliographic database in the work of A. K. Kirillov and V. S. Terentyev in 2005 ^[3]

Semantic categories and their indicators make it possible to get an idea of the semantic accents in the journal materials. The content analysis of Vestnik... made it possible to identify priority thematic categories, which included journal articles, to conduct a frequency analysis of the occurrence of these categories in dynamics by quarter, to consider the relationship of categories through the frequency of their joint occurrence. The interrelationships of categories reveal the argumentation of the authors of articles when covering topics that attracted their attention.

The conducted content analysis of the leading printing body of the Ministry of Finance showed that the "Bulletin ..." reflected the problems of the socio-economic sphere in Russia and abroad that matured during the First World War. Throughout the year, the "finance" category remained the main one, its links with others in terms of the frequency of joint occurrence are the strongest. "Trade" takes the second place in the first two quarters. In the third quarter, the picture changes: the "industry" category comes in second place, and the "political sphere" and "war" divide the third. In the fourth quarter, as we know, the magazine ceased to exist. Nevertheless, a number of conclusions can be drawn: "finance" is in the first place here, but "war" comes next, and the "political sphere" closes the top three. Moreover, when studying the relations of the category "war", an unexpected fact was discovered, which, if traditional methods of analysis were used, would have gone unnoticed: a strong connection with the category "finance" has already been noted, but the links with the categories "industry", "political sphere" and "trade" turned out to be noticeably stronger than even with the opposing blocs of states not to mention neutral countries. Thus, the main thing for the coverage of the military sphere on the pages of Vestnik ... was, first of all, its financial content, as well as political stability, industrial and trade potential of the country in war conditions, and not alliance or confrontation within the respective blocs.

The results of the content analysis show that the pages of the magazine reflected the economic processes in Russia in 1917 in the conditions of the ongoing war. The stable core of the semantic category system was, on the one hand, financial issues related to industry, trade, taxes, on the other hand, political and social problems, since the war put Russia on the verge of financial bankruptcy and social explosion.

The opinion of the editorial board of the magazine on the revolutionary events of 1917 is also important, expressed in the article "From the editorial Board", small in volume, but important in content (that's why we analyzed it in detail). The editorial policy is presented as devoid of neutrality. On the contrary, as already noted, there are signs of a positive coloring of statements about the February Revolution, the desire to give emotionality to the formulations, and, on the contrary, condemnation of autocracy. This suggests that the leadership of Vestnik... in this case solved a twofold task: to demonstrate loyalty to the authorities in the new conditions and indirectly propagandize the corresponding political line among readers.

You can simply select and copy link from below text field.