Digital Humanities in Russia

a View 🔍 from the Inside

Keynote at El’Manuscript 2021

Daniil Skorinkin

dskorinkin@hse.ru

Plan for this talk

  • Me & the Russian DH
  • HSE University DH centre
  • DH research in Russia
  • DH education in Russia
  • DH activism in Russia

So... Поехали!🚀

Gagarin was no DH-er.. But he did venture into the unknown using methods no one used before.

And that happenned exactly 60 years ago today, so I could not help it

Me & the Russian DH

That's what I look like:

my 'Data & the Humanities' talk (video here) at Yandex

My DH(-ish) activities

hum.hse.ru/digital/            hse.ru/ma/dh           sysblok.ru/

  • hum.hse.ru/digital and @dh_hse at Twitter
  • DH contact point for the entire Faculty of Humanities
  • strong interdisciplinary orientation (literature, cultural studies, linguistics, history, philosophy, media, geography)
  • fostering cross-faculty collaboration
  • strong focus on research and education (digital literacy courses, first DH Master’s course in Russia)
  • director: Anastasia Bonch-Osmolovskaya

And here's what it looks like


I did promise you a view from the inside, after all :)

What we do here

DH-conferences and meetups

Public events for those interested in DH

DH schools

DH hackathons

..online for the past 13 months, of course

DH hackathon on Jan 17 2021 (with 33 teams having presented their results)


So, HSE DH centre in a nutshell:

  • DH popularisation
  • DH education
  • DH research

DH research in Russia

Started a long time ago

  • Andrei Bely’s collection of essays, „Symbolism“ (1910)
    • quantitative methods applied to the study of rhythm in poetry
    • a „formalist prior to the formalists in Russia“
  • Nikolai Morozov's 'Linguistic Spectres' — a very early adoption of Lutosławski's stylométrie
  • Formalist movement, concept of estrangement (ostranenie)
  • Shklovsky’s „Art as Technique“ (1917), looking at structures of literary works

Boris Yarkho (1889–1942)

  • early data-driven formalism
  • describing literature as a system of proportions and relations between different features
  • development of these structures over time and across genres
  • incorporating concepts of biology, comparison to the development of life (evolutionary concepts)
  • „Methodology for the Exact Study of Literature“
  • Ярхо Б. И. Распределение речи в пятиактной трагедии: (К вопросу о классицизме и романтизме) // Philologica, 1997, т. 4, № 8/10, 201—284. (written in the 1930-еs)
    f.l.t.r: Grigorij Yarkho (Yarkho’s brother, philologist and translator from the French), Mariya
    Vasiljevna Vakhterova (wife of classical philologist Fedor Petrovsky), Boris Yarkho.

    Image source: https://urokiistorii.ru/article/52560.

    More about the Russian DH Forerunners:

    Inna Kizhner at DH2018.

    Direct link to video

    DH research in today's Russia

    (with a focus on text-oriented research)

    'Computational poetics'

    • Orekhov B., Fischer F. Neural reading. Insights from the analysis of poetry generated by artificial neural networks // Orbis Litterarum. — 2020. — Vol. 75. — Number 5. — P. 230—246. DOI: 10.1111/oli.12274
    • Skorinkin D., Bonch-Osmolovskaya A. Text mining War and Peace: Automatic extraction of character traits from literary pieces // Digital Scholarship in the Humanities. 2016
    • Бонч-Осмоловская А. А., Орехов Б. В. Некоторые применения корпусных методов к наивной поэзии // В кн.: Статьи на случай: Сборник в честь 50-летия Р.Г. Лейбова. Объединенное гуманитарное издательство Ruthenia.ru, 2013.
    Бонч-Осмоловская А. А., Орехов Б. В. Некоторые применения корпусных методов к наивной поэзии // В кн.: Статьи на случай: Сборник в честь 50-летия Р.Г. Лейбова. Объединенное гуманитарное издательство Ruthenia.ru, 2013.

    Quantitative analysis of liturgy

    See more at liturcorpora.ru

    Stylometry

    From: Великанова Н. П., Орехов Б. В. Цифровая текстология: атрибуция текста на примере романа М. А. Шолохова «Тихий Дон» // Мир Шолохова. Научно-просветительский общенациональный журнал. — 2019. — № 1. — С. 70—82.

    Modern stylometry works rather well on (large) Russian texts btw:

    Digitally enhanced epigraphy

    from rssda.su/projects/ep-rus/

    Digitally enhanced epigraphy

    from https://rscf.ru/news/humanitarian-sciences/3d-modelirovanie-pomoglo-prochitat-drevnerusskie-nadpisi/

    Digital Preservation of Cultural Heritage


    http://manuscripts.ru

    Digital Preservation and Dissemination

    (State-Run initiatives)

    Госкаталог РФ

    Digital Preservation and Dissemination

    (Private initiatives +volunteers)

    Digital Preservation and Dissemination

    (Private initiatives +volunteers)

    Digital Preservation and Dissemination

    (Private initiatives +volunteers)

    Digital Пётр

    Digital Preservation and Dissemination

    (grassroots initiatives — mostly volunteers)

    Прожито

    Digital Preservation and Dissemination

    (academic initiatives)

    Репозиторий открытых данных по русской литературе и фольклору

    Digital Preservation and Dissemination

    (academic initiatives)

    Tolstoy Digital -

    Digital Preservation and Dissemination

    rus.dracor.org — our showcase corpus for digital research or Russian drama

    RUS.DRACOR.ORG

    • Objective: grow and maintain a corpus of Russian-language drama from around 1740 to around 1940
    • Main motivation: social network analysis of literary (dramatic) texts
    • But also other types of formal quantitative analysis of drama

    Under the Dracor hood: TEI markup

    Text Encoding Initiative (TEI/XML)

    Network analysis of literature

    is it a thing?

    Network as a model for the 'character system':

    "[Networks] make visible specific ‘regions’ within the plot as a whole <...>. Take the characters who are connected to both Claudius and Hamlet <...>: except for Osric and Horatio, whose link to Claudius is however extremely tenuous, they are all killed <...>; what is truly deadly, is the characters’ position in the network, chained to the warring poles of king and prince. Outside of that bold region, no one dies in Hamlet. The tragedy is all there".

    Franco Moretti. Network Theory, Plot Analysis (Chapter 9 of the “Distant Reading” book)

    Franco Moretti. Network Theory, Plot Analysis (Chapter 9 of the “Distant Reading” book)

    Moretti advocates the use of networks

    "You reduce the text to characters and interactions, abstract them from everything else, and this process of reduction and abstraction makes the model obviously much less than the original object — just think of this: I am discussing Hamlet, and saying nothing about Shakespeare’s words — but also, in another sense, much more than it, because a model allows you to see the underlying structures of a complex object. It’s like an X-ray: suddenly, you see the region of death <...> which is otherwise hidden by the very richness of the play".

    Franco Moretti. Network Theory, Plot Analysis (Chapter 9 of the “Distant Reading” book)

    I have used network analysis extensively in my PhD thesis on Tolstoy

    Networks are a useful auxiliary model for character-systems

    Rostov family keeps 'clustering' together throughout the book

    War-related parts have sparser networks

    'Aide-de-camp' type heroes have high network 'betweennees'

    'Aide-de-camp' type heroes have high network 'betweennees'

    Epilogue is the densest part (though two families still cluster apart)

    Network analysis in RusDraCor

    Initial inspiration: 'Distant Reading' Showcase on German Corpus

    Observations from the bird's eye

    Emerging play structures...

    Goethe-Shakespeare parallelism

    And now on Russian data!

    Zooming in on Boris Godunov

    Zooming in on Boris Godunov

    Same as Goethe — too much Shakespeare!

    "Не смущаемый никаким иным влиянием, Шекспиру я подражал в его вольном и широком изображении характеров, в небрежном и простом составлении планов…"

    А. С. Пушкин. Собрание сочинений в десяти томах. Том 6. Критика и публицистика, c. 300

    ("Unaffected by any other [literary] influence, I was following Shakespeare in his free and broad depiction of characters, in his careless and simple construction of settings...")

    A.S. Pushkin, my translation

    "Твердо уверенный, что устарелые формы нашего театра требуют преобразования, я расположил свою трагедию по системе Отца нашего Шекспира, и принес ему в жертву пред его алтарь два классические единства, и едва сохранил последнее".

    А. С. Пушкин. Собрание сочинений в десяти томах. Том 6. Критика и публицистика, c. 250

    "(Being quite confident that the obsolete forms of our theatre require reformation, I laid out my tragedy according to the system of our Father Shakespeare, and sacrificed two of the three classical unities, and barely managed to preserve the third").

    A.S. Pushkin, my translation

    Classicism vs 'Shakespearean plays' in Russian Corpus

    Gavrila Pushkin — is he important?

    Makes sense to comapre different network centralities here

    Degree centrality

    Node Degree centrality
    Alexei 5
    Daniil 1
    Katherine 1
    Fyodor 1
    Elena 1
    Kate 1

    Node size proprortional to degree:

    Betweenness centrality:

    Node size proprortional to betweenness:

    Gavrila Pushkin: node degree

    Node&label size = Node Degree

    Gavrila Pushkin: betweenness

    Node&label size = Betweenness Centrality

    Gavrila the messenger

    Pushkin, 'My pedigree'

    <...>"About the Tsars the Pushkins moved"<...>

    When the Romanoffs upon the throne

    The nation called by its Chart --

    We upon it laid our hands

    Catching other hidden figures with network measures

    Bityagovsky (double agent)

    A.K. Tolstoi, The Death of Ivan the Terrible (1866)

    Kalachnik / kalach baker (yet another agent)

    A.N. Ostrovskiy, Dimitry the Impostor and Vasiliy Shujskiy (1866)

    Kalachnik speaks for himself

    Калачник:Что я-то?! Я не сыщик, не доносчик;

    Я — весь народ московский; вот кто я!

    Kalachnik:So what about me? I am no whistle blower;

    I am the entire people of Moscow, that's what I am!

    Review of the play circa 2007

    «Довольно загадочной кажется фигура Калачника, темпераментно сыгранного Антоном Хомятовым: с одной стороны, это человек из народа — поборник православной веры, мститель за брата, с другой — «человек в штатском», тайный агент Шуйского, провокатор и шпион. Похоже на то, что его торговля калачами только «прикрытие». Один раз за весь спектакль мы видим лоток на его плече, да и то пустой. Калачник называет себя «народом», но он, пожалуй, ох как непрост?»

    Татьяна Семашко, На волне смуты // Политический журнал, 2.04.2007

    Bitkov (spy on Pushkin)

    M.A. Bulgakov, "Alexander Pushkin, (the Last Days)" (1935)

    Back to macro-analysis

    Basic metric: Network Density

    Density = 0.5 (3/6)      Density = 1 (6/6)

    Densities of plays by genre

    Densities of plays by genre in RusDraCor

    Enough with networks!

    Evolution of stage directions

    Stage directions, quite literally, don’t count.

    Eric Rasmussen

    Example of Stage Directions

    
    <stage>Слуги уходят.</stage>
    <stage>(Подходит к столу; ему дают место.)</stage>
    <stage>Грохот, взрыв, выстрел. Победоносиков распахивает дверь и бросается в квартиру. На нижней площадке фейерверочный огонь. На месте поставленного аппарата светящаяся женщина со свитком в светящихся буквах. Горит слово "Мандат". Общее остолбенение. Выскакивает Оптимистенко, на ходу подтягивает брюки, в ночных туфлях на босы ноги, вооружен. </stage>
    
    						

    Share of stage directions

    Verb usage in stage directions

    Parts of Speech

    (by Dasha Maximova)

    FICTIONAL GENDER LANGUAGE STUDIES

    
    <person xml:id="ZhenaLukiLukicha" sex="FEMALE">
    <persName>Жена Луки Лукича</persName>
    </person>
    <person xml:id="Derzhimorda" sex="MALE">
    <persName>Держиморда</persName>
    </person>
    <person xml:id="Hlestakov" sex="MALE">
    <persName>Хлестаков</persName>
    </person>
    <person xml:id="UnterOfitsersha" sex="FEMALE">
    <persName>Унтер-офицерша</persName>
    </person>
    <person xml:id="Korobkin" sex="MALE">
    <persName>Коробкин</persName>
    </person>
              
              
    					

    FICTIONAL GENDER LANGUAGE STUDIES

    Shiny RusDraCor for Online Network Analysis

    shiny.dracor.org

    DH education in Russia

    DH programs in Russian universities

    • HSE (Moscow)
    • ITMO (Saint-Petersburg)
    • Tomsk State University (Tomsk)
    • Siberian Federal University (Krasnoyarsk)
    • Ural Federal University (Ekaterinburg)
    • Baltic Federal University (Kaliningrad)
    • South Federal University (Rostov-on-Don)
    • HSE (Perm)

    The 'Moscow-Tartu' DH school

    DH activism in Russia

    Enthusiast Digitisation Projects

    Grassroots Media

    • Системный Блокъ (Sistemnyj Blok) — a play on words in Russian reflecting techno-cultural dualism
    • editor-in-chief: Daniil Skorinkin (that's me)
    • main outlet on VK: vk.com/sysblok: > 82 000 users
    • also on Facebook: facebook.com/sysblok (another 24 600 users)
    • Telegram: t.me/sysblok(5200 users)
    • Instagram instagram.com/sysblok (5000 users)
    • website: sysblok.ru (a couple thousands daily visitors)

    Конецъ

    Questions?