The State of Digital Humanities in Russia · Princeton

![workshop logo cropped](images/workshop-logo-cropped.png)

### The State of Digital Humanities in Russia

[Frank Fischer](https://www.hse.ru/en/org/persons/182492735) ¹ ²  ·  [Boris Orekhov](http://nevmenandr.net/bo.php) ¹

¹ Higher School of Economics, Moscow 
² DARIAH-EU

[Slavic DH Workshop](https://cdh.princeton.edu/events/2019/05/slavic-dh-workshop-russian-literary-studies-digital-age/)  ·  Princeton University  🇺🇸  ·  28 May 2019, 9:30–10:30 a.m.

![HSE DH Centre](images/hse-dh-centre.png)

- https://hum.hse.ru/digital/
- formally est. in 2017, director: [Anastasia Bonch-Osmolovskaya](https://www.hse.ru/en/org/persons/32878143)
- DH contact point for the entire Faculty of Humanities
- strong interdisciplinary orientation (philosophy, literature, cultural studies, history, linguistics, media, geography)
- fostering cross-faculty collaboration
- strong focus on research and education (digital literacy courses, first DH Master’s course in Russia)

![DARIAH logo](images/dariah-logo.png)

- Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities
- formally an ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium)
- several DARIAH services, teaching and education, foresight and policy work, working groups
- 18 member states and many cooperating partners in other countries
- #DARIAHbeyondEurope (conferences in USA 2018, Australia 2019)
- https://www.dariah.eu/

‼️ Infrastructure is *not a project*. ‼️

### **Chapters**

1. DH Forerunners (20th Century)
2. DH in Russia: Enthusiasm & Infrastructure
3. Teaching & Learning
4. Summary

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Chapter 1.

### DH Forerunners (20th Century)

The History And Context of the Digital Humanities In Russia

Inna Kizhner at DH2018. Direct link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef5uQPa4svU.

## Formalist Movement

- 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“
- Formalist movement, concept of estrangement (ostranenie)
- Shklovsky’s „Art as Technique“ (1917), looking at structures of literary works
- Moscow Linguistic Circle (1914–1924)

## 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“

![Yarkho et alii](images/yarkho-et-al.jpg)

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.

„Moscow Formalism and Literary History“ (De Gruyter 2019)

![Moscow Formalism, cover](images/moscow-formalism-cover.jpg)

https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jlt.2019.13.issue-1/issue-files/jlt.2019.13.issue-1.xml

„Moscow Formalism and Literary History“ (De Gruyter 2019)

![Moscow Formalism, table of contents](images/moscow-formalism-volume-toc.png)

https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jlt.2019.13.issue-1/issue-files/jlt.2019.13.issue-1.xml

## Kolmogorov & Ershov

- Andrei Kolmogorov: Moscow seminar on quantitative methods and poetry studies (early 1960s)
- Andrei Ershov: computerised corpus of Russian language (1978–2006)

### „History & Computers“ Association

![HSE DH Centre](images/assotsiatsiya.png)

- http://www.aik-sng.ru/
- celebrated their 25-year anniversary in 2017
- but they don’t think they are doing DH 😊

---

Chapter 2.

### DH in Russia: Enthusiasm & Infrastructure

## Some Popular Corpora/Datasets in Russian DH

- НКРЯ (Russian National Corpus, 2000–2004): http://ruscorpora.ru/
- Poetic Corpus: http://ruscorpora.ru/search-poetic.html
- Other corpora: http://ruscorpora.ru/corpora-other.html
- Tolstoy Digital, [encoded in TEI](https://github.com/tolstoydigital/TEI) (Tolstoy Museum + HSE Moscow)
- electronic library of Pushkinskiy Dom (classics): http://russian-literature.org/

## Literary Corpora (Enthusiasts, Activists)

- Maksim Moshkov’s Library (1994–): http://lib.ru/
- Internet Library of Aleksey Komarov (1996–): https://ilibrary.ru/
- Russian Virtual Library (1999–): https://rvb.ru/
- Fundamental Electronic Library (2002–): http://feb-web.ru/
- SovLit: http://www.ruthenia.ru/sovlit/
- <a href="https://ru.wikisource.org/">Russian Wikisource</a>
- https://wikilivres.org/

## GLAM Sector

* Inna Kizhner, Melissa Terras et al.: Accessing Russian culture online: The scope of digitization in museums across Russia. *Digital Scholarship in the Humanities* 34:2, June 2019, pp. 350–367, DOI:[10.1093/llc/fqy035](https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqy035).

## Prozhito

![Prozhito, logo](images/prozhito.png)

- personal diaries from 18th to 21st century
- „Не бывает неважных дневников.“
- community of volunteers
- http://prozhito.org/

### Russia joining EADH in 2017

![Russian DH association](images/russian-dh-association.png)

- http://dhrussia.ru/
- conference in Krasnoyarsk in 2017: http://conf2.sfu-kras.ru/en/dhrussia2017

---

Chapter 3.

### Teaching & Learning

## DH Course Registry

![DH Course Registry, screenshot](images/course-registry-screenshot-2019-05-22.png)

https://registries.clarin-dariah.eu/courses/

## DH Course Registry
- run and maintained in a joint endeavour by CLARIN and DARIAH, the two big European DH infrastructures
- national/regional moderators

## DH Courses in Russia so Far

- Krasnoyarsk
- St. Petersburg
- Moscow

## Moscow-Tartu Digital Humanities School

- three editions 2016, 2017, 2018
- (60, 80, 80 participants)
- 4th edition announced: https://hum.hse.ru/en/announcements/270033921.html (October 18–23, 2019)
- topics across all disciplines of the Humanities

## Popularising DH: SysBlok

![SysBlok, logo](images/sysblok-logo.jpg)

- Системный Блокъ (Sistemnyj Blok”)
- editor-in-chief: [Daniil Skorinkin](https://www.hse.ru/en/staff/skorinkin)
- main outlet on VK: https://vk.com/sysblok
- > 55,500 users‼️
- also on Telegram: https://t.me/sysblok (another 2,700 users)
- website: https://sysblok.ru/

## Typical SysBlok Stories

- [„Why do we need humanities in the age of machine learning?“](https://sysblok.ru/society/zachem-nuzhny-gumanitarii-v-jepohu-mashinnogo-obuchenija/)
- [analysis of stereotypic Women’s Day congratulations](https://sysblok.ru/society/smejtes-i-detej-rozhajte-iz-chego-sdelany-pozdravlenija-s-8-marta/) (via Yandex Wordstat)
- [DH-enhanced obituary](https://vk.com/wall-168717779_2611)
- interviews: [Alexander Piperski](https://sysblok.ru/interviews/cifra-na-sluzhbe-u-filologa/), [Lev Manovich](https://sysblok.ru/interviews/manovich/), Alexandra Elbakyan (in June)

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## Summary

- DH Centre @ HSE
- DH Forerunners in Russia
- Enthusiasm, Projects, Infrastructure
- Teaching, Learning, Popularising

### (Not) The End

Next session: 
[Programmable Corpora: A New Infrastructural Concept for Digital Literary Studies](https://lehkost.github.io/slides/2019-05-28-princeton-programmable-corpora/index.html)