David L. Ransel, A Russian Merchant’s Tale

Abstract

This book is constructed as a detailed, meticulously researched biography of an eighteenth-century Russian merchant, and conceived as an exegesis of a unique source, the diary that Ivan Tolchenov kept daily between 1769 and 1812. Undoubtedly, Tolchenov was not an average representative of his socio-professional group, and the book as a whole can hardly be considered “a portrait of Russia’s commercial class,” as asserted on the fourth cover, though some events of the protagonist’s life are pre...