Accounting profession in Russia has been taking shape since the late nineteenth century. That period is marked by discussions about the subject matter of the profession and establishment of the Institute of Accountants. Reflections arising from these discussions are an interesting topic of modern research. They gave rise to a whole variety of profession-related images (e.g. a 'cultural activist on the economic ground', 'artist and organizer', 'commerce officer', etc.), facilitating the moulding of the Institute rules.The present research is based on extensive materials of those discussions published in the journals Schetovodstvo, Kommercheskoye Obrazovaniye, Kommercheskaya Shkola i Zhizn and others. Among other sources were the materials from Russian educationalists' conventions on technical and professional education, and recommendations of directors of business schools from the series of meetings convened in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Some of resources available were not used in the course of modern studies, nor were they ever examined from this perspective. This paper attempts to provide a critical analysis of the past discussions. We tended to correlate these images with the reality in order to see how productive such discussions can be and which impact on the development of the profession they can have.

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a доктор экономических наук, профессор, заведующий кафедрой бухгалтерского учета и анализа, проректор по развитию учебного комплекса, Санкт-Петербургский государственный экономический университет,