In 1796, the merchant Ivan Tolchenov was secreted in his magnificent mansion in Dmitrov, hiding from his creditors. This episode seeks to understand how Ivan lost his enormous fortune, along the way shedding light into the lives of Russian merchants in the second half of the eighteenth century.
Source
David L. Ransel, A Russian Merchant’s Tale. The Life and Adventures of Ivan Alekseevich Tolchenov, Based on His Diary (Bloomington and Indianopolis: Indiana University Press, 2009)
In 1817, Agustín José Pedro del Carmen Domingo de Candelaria de Betancourt y Molina (known in Russian as Avgustin Betankur) surveyed the site of...
In August 1702, the serving girl Marta came into the possession of a Russian general following a siege. Some twenty-two years later, she was...
In 1852, the novelist and government bureaucrat Ivan Goncharov set sail on the frigate Pallada for a mission to closed-off Japan. This episode follows...