The usage of word counts is still a valuable tool for the non-linear reading of individual works or mid-sized corpora, especially in digital conceptual history. We present first results of a larger project focusing on the history of political concepts in 19th and 20th century Russia, in particular on roughly 300 large essay collections, so-called 'ideynye sborniki'. Our poster discusses word counts and co-occurrences in the table of contents of the manifestos in order to identify the purported topics of discourse in these texts and compares them to the usage of these terms in the texts themselves, i. e. their actual content.