The article presents the main stages of prosopographical research and the formation of collective portraits of deputies of local self-government in Russia in the second half of the XIX century. The problems of searching, organizing, modelling, analyzing and presenting data are considered. In forming the source basis of the study, a combination of a source-driven approach and data obtaining principles were used, depending on the types of characteristics studied. The author shows the transformation of the initially created local database dedicated to the deputies of the Moscow, St. Petersburg and Perm provinces Zemstvo into an information system with a wider set of characteristics and description fields, focusing on changing data sets and their ability to solve various historical research problems. The article discusses questions relating to the completeness of data, ways to expose collected personal information as digital biographies, as well as usage of an information system designed for historical analysis of the Zemstvo deputies' activities. The author shows how a comprehensive historical study can enrich structured prosopographical data, enabling the user to choose the level of data presentation in the form of collective portraits or personalized data, giving an overview of each deputy and the deputies' activities in the Zemstvo.
The creation of collective biographies as life writing can
take various forms and approaches. On the one hand, the
biography can have different scales, from short, full texts
to extended volumes devoted to individuals, groups of
people or personalities united by some common
characteristics
However, certain types of historical sources are often characterized by incompleteness, or insufficient complexity to contain a wide range of significant personal characteristics. Therefore prosopographic databases are often modeled on the basis of data from various sources. These information resources may be of particular value, as they allow for the analysis of collective portraits of the individuals studied, and creation and presentation of collective biographies in digital format. This study of deputies of provincial Zemstvo assemblies in the Russian Empire is a case in point.
This article describes the experience of building a prosopographical database, transforming it into an information system, and creating collective biographies of Zemstvo deputies of three provinces of the Russian Empire such as Moscow, St. Petersburg and Perm in the second half of the XIX century.
2.
The 60-70s of the 19th century became a significant stage in Russian history, a time of the “great liberal” reforms of Emperor Alexander II. Of particular importance was not only the legislative liquidation of serfdom, which gave freedom to the peasants but also the intensification of the processes for the social modernization.
The introduction of Zemstvo self-government in the
Russian Empire was an important link in the chain of
liberal reforms of Alexander II. The significance of the
Zemstvo was that the new institution contributed to the
development of the regional economy and infrastructure,
resolving social problems and contradictions, but it was
especially important for the government to recognize the
need to involve the public to consider these issues and to
provide some autonomy for new regional
self-governmental bodies. Minister of Finance, S.Yu.
Witte, in a confidential note, explained the importance of
the Zemstvo as a “school of representative institutions”
The study of the socio-cultural image and activities of Zemstvo deputies as a collective is a necessary basis for the study of representative institutions in Russia. Only with the creation of the Zemstvo were the main categories of the population able to influence decision-making processes. The culture of interaction of deputies began to take form, the basic principles and orders of the electoral system began to develop and be established, and these elements informed the establishment of the State Duma at the beginning of the 20th century.
Provincial Zemstvo assemblies significantly influenced the development of the socio-political, economic, and social spheres of those provinces where Zemstvo self-government was introduced. Decisions determining the directions of activity, although limited to the framework of the Provisions of 1864, were made in provincial Zemstvo assemblies and inevitably depended on the composition of the collective of deputies, their opinions, competencies, personal experience, and other factors. Thus, the staff of the assembly directly influenced which problems were raised and solved in the Zemstvos, the nature of relations with the provincial authorities, and other factors. Deputies of provincial Zemstvos played an important role in the decision-making process, determining the development of Zemstvo self-government.
In studying the composition of the Zemstvo assemblies, the sociocultural image of the deputies is important – to enable research into factors such as who represented the interests of the population in the Zemstvo, and who solved the social and economic issues of the development of the provinces, and how the collective portrait of the Zemstvo deputies determined the features of the Zemstvo. Famous people and representatives of the local elite, who could be prominent public and political figures of the time and left their documented record in history, were elected to Zemstvo assemblies, especially in the capitals, in Moscow and St. Petersburg. On the other hand, there is no such extensive information about the overwhelming majority of Zemstvo deputies as we have the various sources devoted to individual outstanding personalities on the scale of the capital, a separate region or a state as a whole. Ordinary people were often represented in the Zemstvo, whose memory, if preserved, requires scrupulous research and careful verification. Therefore, the obtaining, modelling and organization of data, and the creation of a prosopographical database for filling with data, allows closer analysis and building a biography of unknown, ordinary people and preserving the memory of them.
The study of the social composition of the Zemstvos
began in the pre-revolutionary period and the study of
the deputies’ image was carried out in the framework of
studying the history of social thought and the Zemstvo
assembly as a whole
At Perm State University, through the Laboratory for
Historical Information Science (now the Center for
Digital Humanities), an entire new research direction has
been formed, a research school for studying Zemstvo
history and local self-government in the second half of
the 19th - early 20th centuries. The researchers of the
Center work on source-study issues on the history of the
Zemstvo, evaluate the completeness, quality of sources,
identify their information potential, document and
analyze sources devoted to Zemstvo history. Digitization
of sources, their study and organization of data are based
on the use of information technology. Thus, the Perm
University has created an information system “Journals
of provincial Zemstvo assemblies”, which was the result
of the project “Journals of provincial Zemstvo
assemblies as a source for studying the history of local
self-government in Russia (2nd half of XIX - early XX
centuries)”
Based on a broad source base, researchers at the Center
for Digital Humanities study Zemstvo history, analyze
sociocultural portraits of Zemstvo deputies from
different provinces of the Russian Empire
4.
The predominance of the obtaining data from various sources in the formation of the source basis of the study for the construction and filling of the prosophographical database should be noted. As mentioned earlier, some deputies of the provincial Zemstvo assemblies were distinguished people, and information about them was preserved in various sources, including periodicals – but for the majority of deputies the reconstruction of the character portrait, life, and activities of these people requires considerable effort due to lack of available information and the need to derive data particle by particle. In addition, despite the fact that candidates had to fill out questionnaires with brief information about themselves before the elections, these sources were usually not preserved and only individual copies of such questionnaires could be found in the archives. Therefore, the reconstruction of biographical data on deputies has required searching for individual information from multiple sources.
The study was made on the basis of a complex mix of sources, some of which were specific to some provinces, and accordingly reflect only information available in particular regions. Therefore, the types of sources were not the same for all the provinces selected for this study, and there were different levels of completeness and irregular distribution of data.
Published and archival materials formed the main source base of the study. These sources were documents from the Central Historical Archive of Moscow, the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Rare Books Department of the Russian Fund of the Russian National Library, the State Archive of the Perm Region, the Perm Regional Museum, and the Rare Book Foundation of the Perm Regional Library in honour of M. Gorky. The full list of deputies was created on the basis of the “Lists of persons elected to provincial representatives” (for ex. Materials of the Rare Book...), which partially contain information about the estates (“soslovie”) and rank of deputies. To supplement the data, lists of candidates for the elections of Zemstvo deputies and ballot lists were used (for ex. Central Historical Archive of Moscow, Fund 11). The regular replacement of deputies posed a difficulty for producing the full list, since the lists of the elected were published at the beginning of the meetings, and the changes in the composition during the meetings were not often recorded.
Demographic characteristics and estate were determined on the basis of official lists of service (for ex. State Archive of the Russian Federation. Fund 575), which were filled in during the elections to the Zemstvo. Formal lists contain a brief biographical note on each elected deputy. Other common features are the county of the election, education, and previous experience of work. These sources are close to the affairs of the personnel of the provincial Zemstvo Assemblies and Zemstvo authorities ("uprava") (The State Archive of the Perm Region. Fund 44). However, this group of sources does not provide information on the majority of deputies of provincial Zemstvos, which required consulting other sources.
Reference sources of the second half of the 19th century
became significant sources for obtaining data about
estates and main areas of activity. They are the
address-calendars, address books, memorial and
reference books of the Moscow, St. Petersburg and Perm
provinces [19]. These sources allowed the discovery of
institutions and organizations (public and state), in which
the deputies took part before, during and after Zemstvo.
This group of sources also includes estate reference
books, calendars, lists of nobility, alphabetic lists of
noble families, genealogical collections, address books
of the St. Petersburg trade merchants, and lists of persons
in the state, public and Zemstvo service, which set out
with greater accuracy the deputies’ estates. Information
on the education of deputies was partly derived from
published materials of educational institutions with lists
of graduates by name
Periodicals of the second half of the XIX century became a valuable and informative source. Regional periodicals, in particular the newspaper Perm Provincial Sheets, contained entire sections about the Zemstvos, including lists of representatives elected to Zemstvo assemblies, and announcements of county and provincial Zemstvos, which contain, among other things, indications of inaccuracies in published information on the activities of Zemstvos, and data on the incompleteness of the lists of persons entitled to participate in electoral congresses. Other periodical sections are important as well, for example, obituaries, which give brief information about the activities of deputies.
Biographies and biographical dictionaries made up an
important group of sources
Some of the information about Zemstvo figures was
established on the basis of a study of the personal
materials from archives (for ex. The State Archive of the
Perm Region. Fund 714) or personal sources such as
recorded memories and memoirs of Zemstvo figures
(A.A Bobrinsky, V.S. Golubev, E.I. Lamansky, G.E.
Lvov, S.A. Muromtsev, V.A. Obolensky, B.N. Chicherin,
D.N. Shipov and others
In relation to the reconstruction of the deputies’ activities,
a source-driven approach was used for this study. The
journals of the provincial Zemsky assemblies of the
Moscow, St. Petersburg and Perm provinces were the
main resource documenting Zemsky office work and
were the central source for understanding this aspect of
the deputies’ lives and identity. To study the journals the
information system “Journals of the provincial Zemstvo
assemblies ...” was used. The value of the journals and
their informational potential are discussed in the articles
by S. I. Kornienko and A. R. Ehlakova
The study of collective portraits of Zemstvo deputies was carried out in two major stages and initially covered the deputies elected to the provincial Zemstvos in 1865-1890. At the next stage, expanding the range of socio-cultural characteristics and reconstruction of data on the activities of deputies, the focus moved to the first triennium since the elections. The Zemstvo deputies were elected for three years and the first such triennium for the Moscow and St. Petersburg provinces is 1865-1868, and 1870-1872 for the Perm province.
social layers and on the dynamics of estate representation
in provincial Zemstvo assemblies were disproved. For
instance, as the study showed, during the years 1864
1890, representatives of the nobility dominated the
capital Zemstvos, which comprised 70-80% of the total
number of deputies. The composition of the Perm
provincial Zemstvo assembly was not so uniform. The
largest groups in the Perm Zemstvo were merchants,
peasants and officials, and the predominance of a
particular group was not constant, but alternated between
1870 and 1890. In the Perm provincial zemstvo, contrary
to the statements by B.B. Veselovsky
A number of the data obtained cast doubt on the opinion that had taken root in Zemstvo historiography about the ever-deepening crisis in the Zemstvo in the 1870s-1880s, which was associated with low attendance. It was shown that the regularity of visits by certain deputies was almost the same on average. An analysis of the social characteristics of these deputies allows us to talk about the formation of a “professional” stratum. Some of the results were obtained for the first time, for example, data on the impact of the deputy’s experience, age, and educational characteristics, as well as a number of competencies on the possibility and likelihood of his being elected to the Zemstvo. In addition, a comparison of the socio-cultural image of the deputies of the provincial Zemstvo assemblies of the provinces under consideration allowed for identification of their common and special features. Thus, the analysis of the database allowed finding of new arguments for proving a number of stipulations on the history of the Zemstvos existing in historiography, questioning some established points of view related to the social structure of provincial Zemstvo assemblies, as well as introducing new knowledge with a higher level evidence base.
As a result of the work on the database and its analysis, new research questions emerged, in particular relating to the ways that the sociocultural characteristics of the deputies influenced the activities, and assessment the interdependence between the deputies’ image and activity. Implementation and transformation of the previous local database managed by MS Access was not a viable option for a number of reasons, and the database was only partially used as a structural and substantial basis for filling the new information resource.
The database “Zemstvo Deputies” of the newly designed
information system “Zemstvo Self-Government in
Russia”
The reconstruction of the full range of activities was carried out on the basis of a study of the legislation on Zemstvo of the second half of the XIX century, but the journals of the provincial Zemstvo assemblies were the main sources for obtaining data.
The following fields are highlighted as the main fields for describing the activities of deputies: • attendance of meetings (number of visits per session); • appointment or election to the Zemstvo administrative position (chairman, secretary, member of the Zemstvo Authority Body); • election to the Zemstvo representation in various non-Zemstvo institutions and organizations; • election to Zemstvo commissions (temporary and permanent); • the signing of documents; • reading reports or other documents at meetings; • presentations in meetings about commission reports; • speaking at meetings on various issues; • expressing a dissenting opinion (submitted as a text message, published in a specific section in journals); and • absence in the meeting.
The characteristics of the deputies’ activities are presented in quantitative data formats, which made it possible to carry out a correlation analysis of the relationship between the different characteristics of the socio-cultural image and activities.
In addition, in the structure of the information system in
the description of each deputy, data on the thematic
(quantitative and qualitative) variety of speeches is
displayed. Presentation of data on the speeches of
deputies is based on the study of the corpora of journals’
texts, the creation and analysis of personal sub-corporas
of speeches of deputies in meetings, as well as the
creation of cognitive maps reflecting quantitative and
qualitative information about speeches. Space diagrams
are published on the personal page of each deputy in the
project “History of the Zemstvo”
Currently, the system contains information about 265 deputies and data on socio-cultural characteristics and performance indicators. The smaller number of personalities compared to the previous database is explained by the study in the current project only of those deputies who were elected to Zemstvos in the first three years from its establishment in the region. However, it is assumed that in case of confirmation of the effectiveness of the chosen approach, the project can be continued and other personnel will be included in the system and their set of features as well.
The search module of the information system allows the user to obtain complete lists of deputies of each province or district, as well as to explore deputies individually by specific characteristics of their socio-cultural image and activity.
The information system is developed on the MySQL DBMS and powered by CMS WordPress.
6.
The prosopographical database and information system allows the user to create and study collective portraits of groups of deputies, compare these collective images with images of deputy groups from different regions, and identify common and special features, so revealing information and knowledge which cannot be obtained by traditional methods. The project can be further developed by increasing the number of deputies, expanding the chronological framework, and adding other provinces of the Russian Empire to the project. However, the question arises of how much personal information about each individual deputy remains valuable and important as an independent set of features, and not as part of a large collective portrait? Are individual characteristics and identities obscured by taking a collective approach? The answer to these questions is obvious and complicated at the same time.
The unifying basis in the case of the information system about deputies is the participation of these individuals in the work of local self-government, the newly established Zemstvo, the forerunner of the Russian parliament. Consequently, the role of each deputy, his contribution to the activities of the Zemstvo can be considered as a general, to some extent impersonal work, or as an individual.
Can a Zemstvo case be regarded as an individual case?
Could the role of one person or a small core of active
participants dominate the general Zemstvo work, direct
and define it? And how important is it for us to know in
more detail about the image and activities of each
individual deputy, if he actively participated, but he did
not necessarily determine the course of development of
the Zemstvo province? How many such important
personalities are present in Zemstvos? To answer these
questions, we can observe the set of features devoted to a
deputy’s activity. Additionally, it is possible to apply
social network analysis approaches. Zemstvo assemblies
as an object of research have a number of features that
make it difficult to apply tried and tested methods of
modelling legislatures
Network analysis data
In this case, while ignoring part of the collective, the whole collective portrait will appear differently and reflect those who really worked, and not those who were elected. It is probably worthwhile to form collective portraits of individual groups according to the contribution of the participants. In any case, the research task is to study in detail each deputy, his sociocultural image and activity, and then determine his role, significance, and contribution to the common purpose. With this approach, deputies find themselves under the watchful historical “microscope”, when the role, place, and value of each deputy becomes obvious, and the uniqueness of each person is not lost in the team. In these circumstances, the creation of digital biographies allows us to choose which approach is more revealing and appropriate. We do not impose any single point of view on the questions postured, but see a solution in modern digital technologies that provide opportunities for different data representations, both collective and individual.
Zemstvo has become to some extent an opportunity for deputies to express themselves. We cannot say for sure about the meaning and role of each deputy in the life of society at that time, but the real fact that they have been trusted by a large number of people in the form of being elected to self-governing bodies speaks about their influence, authority, and motivation to work. Historical sources and, first of all, Zemstvo documentation, contain unique data such as transcripts of the speeches of deputies in the assembly, the diversity of their activities, which certainly provides important information not only for understanding the development of the Zemstvo in whole but also for personal activity. Unfortunately, there are not many sources about the diverse activities of personnel, alternative to Zemstvo documentation, and they are mainly represented by memoirs written by a few of the deputies. The particular importance of this project lies in finding out more about the major deputies, who did not leave other noticeable and significant documented traces in history, except for activities in the Zemstvo.
Also, a positive strength of the database and information system designed for this project is that in the future it may be applied to solving problems other than the tasks implemented in this study. The functional limitation of this database is that only a part of the life biography of the subjects is the focus of this study. At the same time, in aiming to produce a more complete, unlimited framework of certain chronology or subject matter, the digital biography of individuals remains relevant. In terms of future applications, researchers should look for points of contact between the created system and its compatibility with other projects, biographical encyclopedias or personal regional projects in order to enrich the information space with unique data. The creation of life stories and the development of digital storytelling can be promising, which has the potential to attract a wider, not only expert, audience, increase the social impact of such projects, and enhance their social significance. Despite the fact that the system cannot at the moment become the basis of a complete biography of figures due to its fairly narrow research focus and limited sources for which it is impossible to completely reconstruct professional and any other activities of the majority of deputies outside the Zemstvo, yet it has the potential to become the basis for producing significant digital stories dedicated to Zemstvo history and personalities.
7.
This project responded to the need to create a resource available online so that the collected, processed and published data received could be processed and analysed for research purposes. The possibilities of using the database and information system are not limited to solving the tasks of the current research project, namely, analyzing the socio-cultural characteristics and activities of deputies, creating collective portraits, modeling the socio-cultural and professional image of Zemstvo deputies of selected provinces. It was also essential that the available information about deputies as individuals who lived and worked in the past, contributed to the development of local self-government, and even to the course of history in Russia, be exposed as part of the digital public space, a part of the historical information environment.
The study “Socio-cultural image and behaviour models of deputies of provincial Zemstvo assemblies (based on materials from Moscow, St. Petersburg and Perm Zemstvo of the second half of the XIX century)” is supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (No. 17-06-00470, head of the grant Professor S.I. Kornienko).
9.