Article describes tools and main results of using content analysis, one of the quantitative methods of modern science, in the study of the history of environmental problems in early Soviet Russia. The authors on the basis of 5,5 thousand published normative and administrative acts of the first years of Soviet power revealed peculiarities of the state attitude to demographic and environmental problems in the Russian village at a turning point of transition from traditional to industrial type of society. Eventually, conclusions that the content analysis shows its expedience and undoubted perspective to achieve research objectives in the field of social and ecological history.