If you’re the type who loves to grow his beard, and can walk outside freely without worrying that someone might shave it, then consider yourself lucky, as people who lived in Peter the Great’s time did not have your kind of luxury. At that time in Russia, men were not allowed to grow beards, and if the bearer really wants to keep his beard, then that person has to pay the beard tax and carry with him all the time a beard token. Of course, the next question would be: why?
The beard tax was just one part of a larger project: Peter the Great’s aesthetic reinvention of Russian culture. The tsar ordered his subjects to replace their familiar long Russian overcoats with French or Hungarian jackets. Mannequins set outside the Moscow city gates illustrated the new fashions for all to see. Tailors who continued to sell Russian styles ran the risk of steep fines, and anyone walking the streets in an old-fashioned robe was liable to have it shorn short by the Tsar’s inspectors.
Upon Peter the Great’s return from his travels in Europe, he immediately began “Europeanizing” his homeland, starting by shearing the beards of his court nobles at his welcome-home party.
Peter the Great’s beard tax would go on until his death in 1725, and the tax would only be lifted in 1772.
(Image Credit: U.S. State Department/ Wikimedia Commons)