Sergey Lyamin’s research while affiliated with Tambov State University and other places

The work is dedicated to the anniversary of the Dr. habil. (History), Professor Yuri Alexandrovich Mizis. The main scientific achievements realized by Yu.A. Mizis over the years of his professorial and teaching activities, as well as the work carried out by him in the field of scientific interests, are highlighted.

The connection of the category of death is considered in the context of the natural, economic, social, spiritual existence of a peasant. Subjective and objective factors influencing the idea of death are analyzed. The dependence of peasant life on the environment is revealed, since nature occupies a special place in the structure of the peasant mentality. The article contains proverbs, sayings from fairy tales, confirming that the life of an individual was unsteady, was constantly under the threat of death. The theme of the Orthodox interpretation of death is touched upon, where the worldly and spiritual are interpreted as a kind of confrontation. An analysis of the perception of peasant views on child mortality is given, where the emphasis is on the fact that the peasant woman was responsible for survival of the whole family as a whole, all children, and not each individual child. The category of «peace» is affected as the highest pleasure. The embodiment of this highest value is paradise, and the way to achieve it lies through death, which relieves a person of the burden of responsibility. It is concluded that the main aspects, of the peasant way of death are connected with the concrete practical life of the peasant, the peasant family and the peasant community, which was supposed to take care of the life of communityю, as a whole, and not lose heart due to the death of a particular person.

The aim of the study is to reconstruct the demographic strategies of rural societies. The object of the study is individual settlements and village councils (groups of settlements) of the Tambov and Tver regions (a total of 2861 settlements and 371 village councils). The presented work is undertaken within the framework of a large project on fractal modeling of demographic strategies of the agrarian population of European Russia in a long historical retrospective – since the middle of the XIX century. The chronological framework of the article covers not only the agricultural crisis of the 1990s, but also a certain recovery of some rural settlements in the 2000s - 2010s. To conduct experiments with the proposed computer model, a database was created in which the main parameters of the studied settlements and village councils are presented in a formalized form. The authors conclude that, despite all the differences, the demographic strategies of Tver and Tambov settlements evolve within the same pattern: Tver and Tambov regions are simply in slightly different phases of the same process. Peasant society in the Tver region has less potential as a migration donor and a base for natural growth. The older and northern Tver Region has been following the path of de-settlement and urbanization for a longer time. Tambov peasant society is somewhat less depleted and, therefore, could demonstrate great demographic success in the case of a successful demographic policy.

The problem of stability and demographic success of a certain part of Russian rural settlements has been the focus of attention of the general public and representatives of various social sciences and humanities for many decades. Historical science finds its place in the study of the deep roots and causes of such stability and success. Even the major works of regional authors, as a rule, cover several decades of the initial history of the first settlements. Only in a few studies, the southern Russian frontier of the 18th – the first half of the 19th centuries is considered in a long historical retrospective. The aim of this research is to compare the paths to the current state of large settlements in the southernmost territories — the so-called second South Russian frontier. The current state of the studied large settlements in the South of European Russia shows that the decisive role in their stability was played by the initial favorable factors including comfortable natural conditions, support from the state, and the high level of socio-economic activity of people. The article provides additional concrete evidence of the positive result achieved by the state and the Russian population in the development of frontier territories through the skillful use of favorable conditions. The paper is intended for the specialists in history and social sciences, students and all those interested in the fate of the South Russian frontier.

The intersubjective demographic strategies of modern families and settlements appear to be nonlinear, negatively affecting traditional solutions’ efficiency in spurring demographic growth. This study seeks to determine how external circumstances influenced the formation and changes of fundamental collective ideas. The authors present the results from a model of demographic strategies that analyzed 1,544 rural settlements in Central Russia from 1959 to 1989, which was a period of accelerated urbanization and demographic transition. A fractal model was used to reconstruct social intentions. Control factors for each settlement were estimated based on indicators that reflect rural settlements’ material and technical conditions, economic, medical, and social service development levels, and the availability of attractive migration goals. More archaic communities responded to natural growth stimulation in a linear and relatively predictable fashion, but new competencies, needs, and opportunities appeared as communities developed socially and economically. Many counterintuitive effects influenced the evolution of modernized communities. In particular, the migration aspirations of rural youth led to a postponement in births and a drop in the birth rate despite an increased quality of life. An intense migratory influx into hub settlements also contributed to a decrease in the birth rate among the local population.

This study focused on a Russian agrarian microregion (12.5 km2) situated in a forest steppe area (in Tambov Oblast) during the 18th–19th centuries. The research illuminates the mechanisms, patterns, and impact that the environment has on social processes, and vice versa — the human impact on the environment (and particularly on landscape). The authors created a geographic information system which they used to compare the results of aerial survey and satellite imagery, with historical maps and other sources, including archival documents. Morphological anomalies were identified on an orthophotomap, and then interpreted. The conclusions of the research concern the nature of interaction between the agrarian society and the environment. Settlement in the plains of the forest steppe was heavily dependent on the water regime, which directly affected the condition and dynamics of communication routes and economic infrastructure. The vanished settlement found in this study is an example of such an effect: it grew up along a road and was abandoned when the areas through which the road ran were waterlogged. Plain rivers can alter the surrounding landscape quite drastically over relatively short historical periods, and are themselves subject to anthropogenic influence. Changes in living conditions and economic management led to variability in settlement patterns and land use. This can be seen especially well in the lowland, where such schemes were predominantly temporary. The processing of Earth remote sensing data makes it possible to fill gaps in sources and discover new evidence of the past.

Представленное в статье исследование является частью большого проекта по изучению втягивания южных окраин в состав Московского государства. В пред-шествующих публикациях авторов рассмотрена фронтирная динамика отдельных уездов, в этой работе – отдельных поселений. Кроме того, авторы попытались ответить на вопрос, насколько изначальная система сельского расселения на юге Центральной России предопределила судьбы первых поселений в долгосрочной перспективе. В исследовании использованы количественные методы: статистиче-ские группировки и кластерный анализ. Они позволили уточнить закономерности процессов освоения зоны фронтира на материалах 1 645 поселений тамбовского участка окраины XVII – середины XIX вв. Полученные результаты были сопоставлены с историей (в том числе демографической динамикой) поселений, сохранившихся до начала XXI в. Установлено, что наиболее устойчивые и перспективные поселения возникли на начальном этапе освоения фронтира в XVII в. при поддержке государства. Все таковые поселения сохранились до настоящего времени. Устойчивость поселений, основанных в XVIII и особенно в первой половине XIX в., оказалась значительно меньшей: среди них на данный момент доля крупных объектов существенно уступает аналогичному показателю для более ранних. Авторы продемонстрировали, что использование разнообразных количественных методов применительно к истории отдельных населённых пунктов позволяет верифицировать выводы, сделанные на крупно-территориальном (в том числе уездном) уровне, а также даёт возможность получить новые наблюдения, не достаточно очевидные при использовании традиционных описательных методик.

This paper studies in depth an anthropogenic impact on the environment during the formation and development of rural settlements and the exploitation of the surrounding environmental resources. The subject of study is resettlement on a section of the territory of former Tambov uyezd of Tambov Governorate. The land surveying records of the late 18th and early 19th century (General Land Survey plan and Mende Land Survey plan, as well as their Economic notes) were used as sources. The surveying records are supplemented by some narrative sources - particularly, an article by a famous writer and opinion journalist of the mid 19th century, a Tambov landlord, I. R. Gruzinov, which depicts a typical Tambov steppe village. The results of the study revealed key trends in resettlement in Tambov Governorate during the late 18th - early 19th century. On the one hand, there was a sharp increase in the proportion of very large villages; on the other, the number of small new settlements was growing, including through resettlement from villages that had become very large.

The article presents a system-dynamic model of the transformation of Russian regional administrative and political elites in 1985–2019. The model is implemented through the Powersim Studio program. To build the model, the mechanisms and channels of recruiting elites were analyzed, as well as the actors (social and political forces) that influenced the elite substitution system. Information about the object of modeling is formalized in the form of a diagram of stocks and flows. The mathematical apparatus is presented. The model allows simulating the replenishment of elites by people from different social environments and, accordingly, the dynamics of the compo-sition of elites. As an example, one of the alternative – counterfactual – scenarios of the evolution of elites, which was formed during a computer experiment with a model, is considered. The results of the study indicate a high heuristic productivity of system-dynamic modeling in the sociopolitical subject field.

The theory of self-organized criticality (SOC) is applicable for explaining powerful surges of protest activity on social media. The objects of study were two protest clusters. The first was a set of Facebook groups that promoted the impeachment of the Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff. The second was a set of groups on the social network Vkontakte that provided support for anti-government rallies in Armenia, referred to as Electric Yerevan. Numerous groups in the examined clusters were functioning in SOC mode during certain periods. Those clusters were able to generate information avalanches—seemingly spontaneous, powerful surges of creation, transmission, and reproduction of information. The facts are presented that supported the assumptions that SOC effects in social networks are associated with mass actions on the streets, including violence. The observations of SOC make it possible to reveal certain periods when the course of a sociopolitical system is least stable.