Abstract
The article offers an example of an argument-driven data analysis of 120 petitions issued in 1971-1972 by a Soviet Jewish emigrant from Minsk by the name of Ernst Levin (1934-2016). In Levin’s case petitions became a principal instrument of his struggle for emigration from the Soviet Union, which lasted altogether 582 days. Probing ggmap and ggplot2 packages available for R programming language on historical data, this study intends to visualize and consequently reconstruct the way and intensity of Levin’s communication with Soviet authorities and international organizations. In doing so, it approaches the emigration as a process, scaling and visualizing its durability. Displaying and highlighting the changes in the tactics of petitioning over time, the presented in the article graphs and visualizations allow considering Ernst Levin’s emigration efforts from a multi- dimensional perspective of political and public actors, places, organizations, individual decisions and collective actions.
