Prosopographic analysis of the personality F.V. Ezersky

This paper analyses the personality and environment of the remarkable Russian accountant F.V. Ezersky (1832-1915) by means of the prosopographic method. It describes new facts, previously unknown of his biography, obtained from archives on Ezersky's personnel environment, his business and manner of conducting it, correspondence with writers and on the dissemination of Ezersky's name in Russian society. This paper suggests that the origin of the triple entry form of accounting could have been public accounting. An active state councilor, Ezersky is famous for having invented the triple entry form of accounting, for which he received a price at the international congress of accountants in Charle-roi in 1911. In order to popularize his ideas Ezersky created the Society of accountants, one of the first Societies of this kind in Russia. He published many journals, the most famous being «Prakticheskaia jizn» (Practical life). A incandescent polemist, with very conservative opinions, had tried to discuss the Old Testament with Leo Tolstoy and had given advice to Dostoyevsky's widow on how to manage the writer's inheritance. He was the father of a famous cadet, who had been arrested for the Vyborg Manifest. His brother was a Narodnik expelled from St. Petersburg and married to a member of the Socialist Revolutionary party who was a member of a terrorist organization. He built two houses in Moscow, both architectural landmarks. Through the courses he had organized he trained a very diverse representation of intelligentsia and businesspeople.