Part I of a portrait of Ilya Ilich Traber, nickname The Antique Dealer (Антиквар) (
Nasha Versiya Na Neve, in Russian). Older, more explicit material here (
Leningradskaya Pravda). Traber's career path, roughly, has been: sailor > barman > antique dealer > effective controller of the ports in Leningrad > resident of Spain. It has been suggested, even, that Traber it was who arranged the appointment that enabled Vladimir Putin to move from St Petersburg to Moscow. But he's scarcely heard of in the West. When I type "Ilya Traber" (in inverted commas) into Google search, I get only one result (
premier.gov.ru). Speaking as a person who began trading antiques as a schoolboy, it's nice to see that someone in the business has done so well.