Ideas and Ideals

Agricultural statistics data are analyzed through supplementary types of sources, which provide a critical look at the key statistical sources – agricultural census in 1916, 1917 and 1920. The cross-sectional analysis of statistics, record keeping and narrative material have enabled the author to conclude that the growth of agricultural production in Siberia during the World War I, as it is drawn from well-known statistical sources, can hardly be considered reliable, with the production growth still rising according to some indicators even during the Civil War.

The article presents the results of studying the role of statistics in jurisprudence research, methodo-logical aspects of correlation and interaction of statistics and jurisprudence as independent sciences. Most closely, this interaction is manifested in legal statistics now. It is concluded that the legal phenomena as the elements of the legal system of the society are the subject of legal statistics. The official legal practice and public awareness are its main components. The task of legal statistics can be considered resolved upon receipt of the results of quantitative measurements of the data arrays of legal phenomena and the establishment of stable correlations be-tween them. However, such results are not enough for the jurisprudence. Legal studies are designed to reveal the inner, first of all, the causal regularities of emergence, de-velopment and functioning of state and law, the most effective methods and mechanisms of legal regulation of social relations. For this, the results and techniques of statistical observations are being currently actively used, which allows us to distinguish a statistical law, a relatively independent complex sphere of scientific research. It is characterized by the use of statistical methods for legal tasks solution, such as the establishment of the causes and elaboration of measures on prevention of delicts. The article presents the statistical jurisprudence main research areas and current problems.

The problem of the reliable statistics on the USSR repression in 1918–1956 remains an urgent scientific challenge. It is particularly difficult to carry out calculations of the Civil War terror victims, as well as those who were killed in political, ethnic and peasant exile in the 1920–1950-ies. Inaccessible documents from Russian FSB, MIA, AP and a number of other important sources hamper a thorough study of the statistics. Nevertheless, the study of the material from the central and regional archives undertaken by the author enabled him to get valuable statistical information and convincingly challenge the accuracy of the figures usually given, especially for the period of the Civil War and the beginning of the 1930s. The documents from the FSB central archive provided the evidence of mass executions based on the extrajudicial procedure in 1933, the number of which turned out to be much higher than announced in the early 1990s. The statistical tricks used to drastically underestimate the mortality level in the Gulag camps were also refuted. Thus, the new data require clarification of the repressive statistics that will inevitably increase the number of victims of the state punitive actions.

The authors argue the need to develop a strategy for the country’s socio-economic break through, the formation of a new type of economic system - a knowledge-based economy. A qualitative characteristic of this type of economy in the form of a conceptual model is given in the article, and they also consider approaches to quantify the knowledge economy.