Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences I. D. Kovalchenko The main task of Soviet historical science at the present stage is to increase the relevance, quality and effectiveness of research, to create fundamental works, the results of which will have practical, applied, theoretical and methodological significance. One of the important conditions for the successful solution of this problem is the improvement of research methods, including the use of quantitative methods. The first experiments with the use of computers and mathematical and statistical methods in concrete historical research in our country were related to the processing of local statistical data on the socio-economic, primarily agricultural, history of Russia The distinctive features of the current stage of development of research using quantitative methods are not just the growth of their number, the expansion of the scope of application, the variety and improvement of methodological techniques and tools, but above all the formulation of research problems that are difficult to solve using traditional methods. 2Soviet historians still focus on the study of socio-economic history. The leading place here is occupied by research on the agricultural history of Russia. Their main goal is a holistic disclosure of the inner essence and mechanism of the phenomena under study. Thus, as a result of the study of the internal structure of the peasant and landowner economy based on the processing of statistical data sets (materials from scribal books, zemstvo-statistical surveys, agricultural and land censuses, etc.), it was possible to significantly deepen our understanding of the mechanism of functioning of the feudal-serf system of economy, the level of development of capitalism in the peasant and landowner economy at the end of the XIX - at the beginning of the XX century. and to solve a number of other issues that caused controversy among historians. Significant results were obtained when quantita ... Читать далее