"Efficiency in science is first of all fundamentality": a quantitative history through the prism of the personal archive of Academician I.D. Kovalchenko

The year 2023 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of academician I.D. Kovalchenko, an outstanding Soviet and Russian historian. This article is devoted to important aspects of his academic and organizational activities in the field of application of mathematical methods and computers in historical research. This is a look through the prism of the academician's personal archive. The article describes the discussion on the problems of modeling historical processes and phenomena, in which academician I.D. Kovalchenko participated, and also reveals his position on the analysis of alternatives to the historical process. As the main example of an alternative historical situation analyzed by I.D. Kovalchenko, the "Great Turning Point" is considered, the end of the 1920s. Bukharin's alternative is considered as actually existing. The materials of Academician Kovalchenko's personal archive clearly demonstrate his conviction that the application of mathematical methods in historical research is not a "purely technical" task, he formulates a number of methodological issues that arise in this kind of interdisciplinary research. The materials of the academician's personal archive reveal an important feature of his research – attention to the correctness of the using mathematical and statistical methods. While working on his doctoral dissertation, he tested its methodology at a seminar of the specialized Department of the Faculty of Mathematics of Moscow State University. The work on the monograph (jointly with L.V.Milov) on the formation of the All-Russian agricultural market gave rise to correspondence with N.S. Chetverikov, a famous Soviet and Russian statistician of the Chuprov school, who developed, in particular, mathematical methods for analyzing dynamic series. In this correspondence, controversial issues of statistical methodology were clarified. Quantitative history, the founder of which in Russia is academician I.D. Kovalchenko, is again an urgent trend today. In the 21st century, there has been an actual increase in interest in Data Science, the traditional core of which is statistical methods.

Quanitative history, Academician Kovalchenko, History Faculty of Moscow University, quantitative methods, modeling, historical alternatives, historical sources studies, computational models, Historical information Science, Data Science