Peter The Great Taxed Beards And Forced Nobles To Shave

Peter, the Russian tsar, departed in 1697 for a trip through Europe, and traveled incognito with the name Pyotr Mikhailov (sometimes rendered in English as Sergeant Pyotr Mikhaylov, reflecting his assumed military rank). However, his disguise failed utterly, as tales of the towering, nearly seven-foot tsar preceded him everywhere he went.

The tsar worked in a Dutch shipyard for months, learning to build ships. He then went to England and continued to study in the Royal Navy’s dockyard.

Of course, Peter didn’t just study, either. As any modern college kid might do, he threw some pretty raucous parties. One party resulted in 50 chairs being broken, paintings being shot at, and lawns and gravel walks having holes in them from wheelbarrow races.

Peter was sure that Russia had fallen behind Europe and had to be transformed from the bottom up. He thought old traditions, the clothing, the institutions, the ceremonies, everything had to be abolished. When he returned, he began an assault on Russian society. He might have begun by changing anything, but he chose to start with the faces.

The first casualties of Peter’s new obsession were the beards of his court nobles, which he himself had the honor of cutting off during his welcome-home feast. Indeed, there’s no way you can politely refuse the tsar when he brings a razor to your face.

At Peter’s New Year’s party, he doubled down in the strangest way. His jester was working the crowd with a razor, and anyone who seemed reluctant to shave got a clip on the ear for their trouble. Yikes!

A little background here: the Russian Orthodox Church held that man was created in God’s image, beard and all, so to shave it off was a mortal sin. Facial hair was a marker of piety, and saints in icons and church carvings always had beards. In other words, to the faithful, Peter wasn’t just changing how they looked. He was violating their religion.

Beards also had a strong social connotation; Russian nobles wore long beards for the prestige and honor they conferred. A beard was the mark of the well-to-do.. No wonder a well-kept beard was something men took real pride in.

One English visitor noted of a carpenter: “They were forced to shave him, whereupon he pulled out the hair of his beard that was within his shirt, to shew me, saying he would keep it and be buried with it, that he might be able to account for it to Saint Nicholas in the next world.”

The same English visitor who watched the carpenter observed that a lot of the Russians complied only because they were terrified. The beards were sometimes yanked out by the root, or forcibly removed so roughly that the skin would peel off as well!

In the end, Peter relented (sort of, anyway). He didn’t outright ban beards anymore, but instead instituted a tax on men with facial hair.

The amount you paid was directly proportional to your rank; the wealthiest merchants and officials might pay up to a hundred rubles per year, while lower-class townsfolk still owed a fixed annual sum, often around thirty rubles. The clergy paid nothing, and peasants paid nothing as long as they stayed in their home villages, though entering the city cost them a kopek. In short: the more money you had, the more your beard cost you.

For a peasant, though, the beard tax was not a one-time annual charge, but rather a fee levied for each entry to the city. The tax was about one kopek each time.

Those who paid were given a small metal coin (copper for commoners, silver for wealthier ranks), which they kept as evidence. It featured a simple portrait (sometimes only a nose and a mustache), and some text stating that the tax had been paid.

The beard tax tokens actually contained sarcastic inscriptions, ones that said something like, “the beard is a superfluous burden.” So the government took your money, handed you a receipt, and used that receipt to tell you your beard was pointless.

City gates were patrolled, and tax collectors intercepted bearded men, demanding receipts. Those who didn’t have tokens would not be allowed in. Officers were authorized to fine or forcibly shave them on sight.

Peter instructed his subjects to abandon their long traditional Russian coats and replace them with French, German, or Hungarian styles. He even installed mannequins at the entrance of Moscow’s city walls, which displayed the new style for all to see.

The Russians found ways around the beard tax, of course. No society can exist without loopholes. Some people simply wore fake beards, or carried tokens without having actually paid, hoping to bluff their way past an inspector, though hard evidence for this is thin.

Enforcement in rural Russia was practically nonexistent. Most peasants simply ignored the law, particularly in areas where tax collectors rarely ventured. Far-flung Orthodox villages continued to regard beards as holy, just as they always had.

In time, word began to circulate that Peter had not been the real tsar but an impostor sent to Russia by its enemies. Letters denouncing him as a blasphemer began appearing anonymously on the city streets. In 1705, there was a military revolt at Astrakhan, with the rebels claiming to be fighting on behalf of Christianity against shaving and foreign dress. The revolt was put down, and hundreds died.

This content was created with the help of AI.