Decoding the Past: Digital Methods in Eastern Europe’s Twentieth Century beyond Digitization

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel explores the intersection of artificial intelligence, digital humanities, and historical research, showcasing methodologies for analyzing archival records, biographical data, and secret police documents. Sergii Gurbych shows how handwriting recognition models, language processing techniques, and GIS mapping can be applied to the study of Zionist youth organizations in interwar Galicia. Liudmila Lyagushkina compares the results and intersection of analysis with generative AI and traditional digital tools like GIS to link and understand biographical data through the arrest files of people who were arrested multiple times under Stalin. Seth Bernstein explores how such tools can demystify the archives of the secret police, which often lack cataloging material that would help researchers work. Paula Chan evaluates the strengths and limitations of using AI to connect the networks of Soviet Jews through a comparison with human-generated analysis of these networks, and through both networks, attempts to reconstruct the social networks of people arrested in Stalin's final years. Together, these presentations highlight both the potential and challenges of integrating AI in academic research.

Sub Unit

• Digital Humanities

Chair

• Jared McBride, UCLA

Papers

• Digital Humanities Approaches in Historical Research: Zionist Youth Organizations in Interwar Galicia - Sergii Gurbych, Vilnius U (Lithuania)

• Generative AI or ‘Traditional’ Digital Tools?: Experimenting with Biographical Data on Repeatedly Arrested Victims of Stalinism - Liudmila Lyagushkina, U of Nottingham (UK)

• Big Brother Where Art Thou?: AI in the KGB Archive - Seth Bernstein, U of Florida

• Secrets, Lies, Mistakes: AI and Network Analysis of Late Stalinist Antisemitic Prosecutions - Paula Chan, U of Oxford (UK)

Discussant

• David L. Cooper, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign