ENDefinition of historical sociology is based on the three theoretical concerns: a) sociology is specifically concerned with the transition to industrialization as an historical process; b) sociology is concerned with the pattern in the life histories of individuals in sočiai contexts; c) sociology is concerned with the dynamic between human agency and sočiai structure. In this article is described a possibility to use sočiai and demographic indications from his torical sources to reconstruct imagined communities. Three historical sources are analyzed there: general census of the population, books of churches and treasury census of Lithuania when its territory was the part of the Russian empire (after 1795). In those sources we can fmd concentrated information about changes of nationalities, when changed the criterions of census; about family structure. Theoretical position assumes a connection between the nuclear family and industrialization, but we can to observe nuclear family in pre-industrialization period of society. [From the publication]