Studying various types of occupations of the Russian population from Bessarabia during the interwar period, subjective sources, in which the authors describe their work activities, are most valuable. In this regard, the memoirs, left by lawyer N. N. Tolmachevsky (1885, Balti – 1955, Craiova) and kept in the National Archive of the Republic of Moldova, hold important information. According to the task, set for himself: “to write everything the memory has retained about the historical events taking place in his native land, about those personalities the fate has pushed him with”, the author included his biography in the vast political and social context of the early 1900s – late 1930s in Bessarabia, illustrating it with a lot of examples from the life and professional path of a “typical Bessarabian” (G. Bezvikonny). N. N. Tolmachevsky’s biography was successful. After graduating from the Law Faculty of Kharkov University, he was an assistant to a sworn attorney in Kishinev District Court. During the interwar years, he worked in the private sector as lawyer-consultant, notary office manager, head of the office of the legal department of the Union of Cooperatives “Bessarabia”, etc., retaining his former social status. Based on personal experience, the memoirist reveals the specific content and the significance of his profession in the new historical conditions, the meaning of which he understood not just as a way of existence, but as serving for the benefit of his native land. Following the former social and cultural traditions, like many of his colleague lawyers of the old formation, N. N. Tolmachevsky closely correlates the professional norms with ethical values, showing excellent knowledge of the laws and their strict application in practice with honesty and decency. Thus, the features of the historical and cultural phenomenon of the Bessarabian intelligentsia of the generation of the 1880s – 1890s have emerged through the “professional” plot.