A Russian Merchant's Tale: The Life and Adventures of Ivan Alekseevich, Tolchënov, Based on His Diary
2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 51; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2375-2475
Autores Tópico(s)Canadian Identity and History
ResumoDavid L. Ransel. A Russian Merchant's Tale: The Life and Adventures of Ivan Alekseevich Tolchenov, Based on His Diary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. xxx, 352 pp. Photographs. Maps. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $65.00, cloth. $24.95, paper.Judging by title, David Ransel's book promises an exhaustive case study of one eighteenth-century Russian merchant. Hailing from a prosperous family of grain traders, Ivan Alekseevich Tolchenov (b. 1754) inherited his father's business while still in his twenties. After making a small fortune, he served as mayor of his native Dmitrov where he hobnobbed with local aristocrats and clergymen, all while chalking up astronomical debts. Forced to declare bankruptcy in 1797, he was demoted to status of lesser town dweller and reduced to paying poll tax for rest of his life. This is no ordinary story by any standard. Even more unusual, for many decades Tolchenov chronicled everything he did and everyone he met in a diary. Preserved in Archive of Library of Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, it contains a treasure of raw data on everyday Ufe of Russia's merchants. Yet diary offers much more than that. In Ransel's hands, it exposes a complex web of relationships spanning eighteenth-century Russian society as a whole, from highest echelons of westernized nobility and clergy to house serfs and peasants. In best tradition of microhistorical studies, A Russian Merchant 's Tale is story of eighteenth-century Russia itself.Ransel employs two methods. The first is habitus, defined by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to signify the set of behaviors and responses habituated in a person as he or she moves through given 'fields' of life (p. xxi). Thousands of formulaic phrases inscribed in diary enable Ransel to retrace boundaries of Tolchenov's lived experience and reconstruct his habitus. It is record of religious observance that highlights its contours most conspicuously, such as one litany from 1802: [July 30th] I heard mass for feast of John Warrior...; [July 31st] I heard mass in my parish church. .; [August 1st] I heard mass at Monastery of Miracles. .; [August 2nd] I heard mass at Church of St. Basil Blessed... (p. 223). Tolchenov's reactions to pleasures and pains of life, all of which he dutifully registered in a monotonous chronicle of births and deaths, illnesses and recoveries, feast days and weddings, similarly underscore importance he placed on outward displays of piety. None of this is surprising - Russia's merchant classes were renowned for clinging to tradition. Although Tolchenov thought of himself as enlightened, it is noteworthy that he tended to opt for miracle-working icons against advice of his doctors whenever he was confronted with life-threatening illnesses.The second method is reflexivity, or the process of receiving and responding to feedback from fields into which a person has not been habituated by upbringing and training. . (p. xxi). In plainer language, Tolchenov was an unabashed climber (p. 55) whose drive to enter Dmitrov's social and political elite left abundant trace evidence in diary. …
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