The Beard Tax
Thursday, November 13, 2008 at 7:49AM Last night at the Walk Thru History Class our topic was The Beard Tax...
When Peter the Great (1682 -1725) became Tsar/Czar of Russia it was a relatively small country that lagged far behind Western Europe in economic development, technical prowess and political prestige. Peter had travelled to the West and upon returning determined to drag what he considered a backward nation into the (then) modern age.
He figured that part of the problem was his people: for them to become like Western Europeans technically and economically they had to become like them culturally. To get them to start thinking like Westerners he figured that they should start looking like Westerners.
So through a combination of bans, taxes and mandates he began to force his government officials and leading citizens to wear western style clothing. Out with the tunics, in with the business suits.
But that wasn't enough: what good was a european suit when the man wearing it had a chest length beard marring its lines? Peter wanted investors from countries like Germany to come to Russia and pour money into the economy and trade. He figured that his officials and leading citizens sloshing their beards into their cups at state dinners wasn't making a winning impression on foreign visitors. This was an account from an English engineer who visited Russia during this time:
It had been the manner of the Russians, like the Patriarchs of old, to wear long beards hanging down upon their bosoms, which they combed out with pride, and kept smooth and fine, without one hair to be diminished; they wore even the upper-lip of that length, that if they drank at any time, their beard dipped into the cup, so that they were obliged to wipe it when they had done, although they wore the hair of their head cut short at the same time... the Russians had a kind of religious respect and veneration for their beards... alleging that the holy men of old had worn their beards according to the model of the picture of their saints.
In 1698 Peter forbid his government officials from wearing beards. If they showed up at court with one he had it cut off or pulled out. Ouch.
Pleased with his newly clean-shaven noblemen, Peter extended his reform to the middle class. In 1705 he imposed a tax on beards. From the same English engineer who took a business trip to Russia at the time:
The Tsar therefore to reform this foolish custom, and to make them look like other Europeans, ordered a tax to be laid, on all gentlemen, merchants, and others of his subjects (excepting the Priests and common peasants, or slaves) that they should each of them pay 100 rubles per annum, for the wearing of their beards, and that even the common people should pay a copeck at the entrance of the gates of any of the towns or cities of Russia, where a person should be deputed at the gate to receive it as often as they had occasion to pass. This was looked upon to be little less than a sin in the Tsar, a breach of their religion, and held to be a great grievance for some time, as more particularly by being brought in by the strangers. But the women liking their husbands and sweethearts the better, they are now for the most part pretty well reconciled to this practice.
In order to prove that one had paid the Beard Tax and thus was entitled to slosh in in your goulash one was given a medallion, like this:
The point of all of this during last night's class? We talked about the history of social control and the perpetual conflict in society between the government's desire to impose norms and the rights of individuals to disobey those norms. Our conflicts today over things like drug or prostitution laws, homeschooling or gay marriage are contemporary examples of the question of just how and when should a society place limits on individual rights.
Reader Comments (2)
I wonder what would happen if America instituted a fat tax?
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