Ubiquitous economic, social and political factors shaped the development of commerce in Tsarist Russia prior to 1800. Trade with the Hanseatic League might have been expected to have brought a concomitant modernization of accounting techniques in the State of Muscovy. However, the economic backwardness in which merchants operated, their virtual illiteracy, deep conservatism and traditional ways significantly delayed the adoption of superior European accounting concepts and practices, including double entry, in spite of Tsarist edicts to the contrary. Accounting literature, an important channel for dissemination of accounting ideas, first appeared in the Russian language in the eighteenth century, consisting in the main of translations of French and German works.