The Diary of a Merchant: Insights into Eighteenth‐Century Plebeian Life

Abstract

The diary of I. A. Tolchenov, an eighteenth-century Russian provincial merchant, is a rare source. Because its author did not belong to that minuscule elite of Russian aristocrats and intellectuals who had recently learned to keep diaries or write memoirs, it opens a window on the daily lives and concerns of an important social stratum about which we know very little. The structure of social life described in it-the frequent hosting and visiting-and the sentimentalist voice in which personal concerns are expressed have points in common with the life of a later, more articulate social group, sketched in John Randolph's contribution to this issue. In the case of the eighteenth-century merchant family, however, we usually get no more than a glimpse of local societal and family concerns and have to tease out the fuller meaning of the diaries entries by learning about and sketching in the context.' Historians are dependent on preserved records, and what tends to get preserved are the papers of and about political and military leaders, government officials, wealthy and influential private persons, and prominent intellectuals. The common people of the past left only faint traces in the preserved records. The principal means of learning about them has been through analysis of serial or institutional records. The advent of the computer as a research tool in the 1960s and 1970s made this type of work feasible. Analyses of serial records allowed historians to see the economic and demographic impact of ordinary people, but it was usually possible to speak only in terms of cohorts, regions, and structures, not about individuals. Instances of the actions of individuals, not to mention the voice of ordinary people, rarely appear in serial records. The records of government agencies, even the famous Tenishev private archive now at the Ethnographic Museum in St. Petersburg, contain at best heavily mediated echoes of the voices of ordinary Russians. In the records of foundling homes, for example, certain reports describe the condition of ordinary women and families. On rare occasions, the officials reported briefly on the laments or feelings of the people they were observing. But it is impossible to assess whether the reports were conveying direct speech or simply telling stories designed to claim resources or advance a particular policy.2 For studies of periods close to the present, oral interviews permit the subjects of historical inquiry to become not only visible but audible, bringing their voices directly