Abstract: The key task of the presented article is to test how we can analyze the information potential of a historical sources collection by using thematic modeling. Some modern collections of digitized historical materials number tens of thousands of documents, and at the level of an individual researcher, it is difficult to cover available funds. Following a number of researchers, we suggest that thematic modeling can become a convenient tool for preliminary assessment of the content of a collection of historical documents; can become a tool for selecting only those documents that contain information relevant to the research tasks. In our case, the Birzhevye Vedomosti newspaper was chosen as one of the main collection of historical documents. At this stage, we can confirm that in our study, the use of topic modeling proved to be a productive solution for optimizing the process of searching for historical documents in a large collection of digitized historical materials. At the same time, it should be emphasized that in our work topic modeling was used exclusively as an applied tool for primary assessment of the information potential of a documents collection through the analysis of selected topics. Our experience has shown that, at least for Birzhevye Vedomosti, topic modeling with LDA does not allow us to draw conclusions from the standpoint of our content analysis methodology. The data of our models are too fragmentary, it can only be used for the initial assessment of the topics describing the information contained in the source.

Abstract: The article studies St. Petersburg Stock Exchange speculator’s economic thinking at the beginning of the 20th century. It finds out how market participants analyzed fundamental (or economic) and speculative / irrational pricing factors to make trade decisions. The author primarily addresses the way the market was perceived by its agents. He makes content analysis and network analysis to create the matrix of perception by identifying connections in categories of economic thinking. The main idea of the study is its address to the level of trade decision formation. Describing the stock exchange life in the Russian Empire in the early 20th century, the author attempts to see how trade participants understood the way the stock exchange market functioned. Based on the results of the study, two key findings are formulated. According to I.P. Manus, the fundamental factors of the economic process are a part of the concept of the perfect economy which the real economy strives for. The main distortion that prevents this utopia from coming true is the human factor: the desire for easy money that leads one to a financial crime; artificially maintained information asymmetry; the stupidity and emotionality of the "crowd" which is the "eternal" victim of a cynical speculator, etc. At the same time, it turned out that any speculative strategy presupposes (in the reflexive model of Manus) the exploitation of fundamental mechanisms (such as "liquidity" or "supply volume") through the creation of barriers to the functioning of the perfect economy.