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. 

DOI: 10.7256/2585-7797.2017.3.23752

Abstract: The article describes the methodology for analyzing the primary materials of the 1922 All-Russian Census of the RCP (B) members that was based on the use of historical and typological method. The article is composed of three logical blocks. The first section deals with the essence of the historical and typological method, its types and problems solved. The second section characterizes sociological and demographic typologies of families and their dependence on the research object, i.e. its local and temporal aspects and research goals. The third section reveals the technique for studying the party census data. The key goal of the article is to show the analytical potential of historical typology, consider the modes of the method application (multidimensional analysis methods included) and substantiate the efficiency of its use to study nominative sources organized within a database. The authors implemented a combination of the deductive and the inductive approaches to form a typology that was based on the use of mathematical and statistical methods. The typological method allows us to extrapolate the results of the study of the target array (party families) to the entire early Soviet society of the early 1920s and trace the influence of ideological factor on historical and demographic processes