Russian monarch Peter the Great imposes a tax on beards - September 5th, 1698

On this day in 1698, Tsar Peter I imposed an annual tax on Russians who wished to keep their facial hair.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that proves there's more than one way to
make history. I'm Gabe Blusier, and today we're talking about

(00:23):
one ruler's quest to bring his old fashioned country up
to date by compelling his subjects to shave their whiskers.
The day was September five, six. Czar Peter the First

(00:44):
imposed an annual tax on Russians who wished to keep
their facial hair. Peter the First, better known as Peter
the Great, made it his mission to gradually modernize Russian
culture so that it better aligned with the European super
powers of his day. The beard tax was one of
the quirkier components of this ambitious ongoing project, as beards

(01:09):
and other forms of facial hair had fallen out of
favor in Western Europe during the seventeenth century. Before Peter
rose to power at age twenty two, Russia had very
little association with Europe. Nations such as England and the
Netherlands were busy exploring and colonizing regions around the globe,

(01:29):
whereas Russia mostly kept to itself and didn't have much
of a navy to speak of. Without that exposure to
other cultures or the sense of competition that arose from it,
Russia's society, technology, and politics had grown stagnant. Peter the
First sought to change that, but first he needed to

(01:50):
learn more about what had made those other nations so successful.
To do this, he embarked on a two year tour
of Western Europe, which he called the g And Embassy.
He and his entourage of about two hundred and fifty
advisers and diplomats set out in sixteen seven to learn
everything they could about European life. Peter traveled in disguise

(02:14):
to avoid attracting unwanted attention, and even adopted a false name,
Sergeant Pyotr Mihailoff. With this ruse in place, Peter was
able to spend four months working in a Dutch shipyard,
where he learned all about modern shipbuilding. Next, he traveled
a Great Britain and supplemented his newfound knowledge by working

(02:36):
in one of the Royal Navy's dockyards. After that, Peter
visited British factories, schools, and museums. He viewed collections of
natural curiosities and attended demonstrations of new surgical procedures. He
even attended a session of Parliament. Along the way, Peter
also partied with English nobles, including at one especially wild

(02:59):
of at a manor house in Deptford. According to diarists
and party host John Evelyn, that evening's festivities resulted in
three hundred broken window panes, twenty five shredded paintings, and
more than fifty smashed up chairs, the pieces of which
were used to fuel the stoves. Peter the Great had

(03:20):
worked hard to absorb European culture, and apparently he played
hard too. When he returned from his Grand embassy in sixteen,
the young emperor set to work on westernizing his still
largely agrarian country. Among the many reforms he led was
the establishment of a standing army and a state of

(03:40):
the art navy. He also revised Russia's calendar and written language,
and laid the foundation of the port city of St. Petersburg,
a center of Russian culture and a major gateway for
international trade. These changes were introduced over the course of
several years, but one of the first measure years Peter
took to reinvent Russia was to imitate the fashion sense

(04:04):
of Western Europe. Shortly after his triumphant return, a lavish
welcome home party was held in the ruler's honor. Peter
chose this occasion to try to get Russians to go beardless,
and he wouldn't take no for an answer. Once he
had greeted and embraced each of his guests, Peter pulled
out a large barber's razor and proceeded to personally shave

(04:27):
off the beards of those in attendance, whether they liked
it or not. The czar explained that furry faces were
now passe in Europe and that if his countrymen wanted
to be taken seriously, they'd have to submit themselves for sharing.
Peter was so dedicated to this cause that he actually
banned beards throughout the country. He even ordered authorities to

(04:50):
forcibly shave anyone who refused to comply. Police carried out
that threat on numerous citizens, and the sight of that
action quickly compelled others to fall in line. According to
visiting Englishman John Perry, most Russians obeyed the order due
to quote the terror of having their beards pulled out

(05:11):
by the roots or sometimes taken so rough off that
some of the skin went with them. The only exceptions
to the ban on beards were peasants because no one
cared if they looked stylish or not, as well as
members of the clergy, who considered the mandate blasphemous. That's
because the teachings of the Russian Orthodox Church considered uncut

(05:34):
facial hair to be a sign of religious devotion. The
thinking went that man was created in the image of God,
and since men naturally grow beards, that meant God had
a beard as well. Therefore, to shave off your beard
was to sully that image and make yourself a less
accurate reflection of your creator. Pious subjects spoke out in

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defense of facial hair, and even circulate did anonymous letters
accusing Peter the Great of blasphemy. Some devout men were
so troubled by the edict that they kept their shaved
beard hairs so that they could be buried alongside them
in case they had to explain the matter to St. Nicholas. Still,
these anxieties failed to move the Czar, and the mass

(06:19):
shavings continued. Some historians have since suggested that Peter wasn't
just trying to emulate what he'd seen in Europe. By
targeting such a deeply held religious belief, he may have
been trying to reduce the Church's influence and expand his own.
Whatever his true motivation, Peter eventually took the feedback and

(06:40):
opted for a softer approach. On September five, he decreed
that Russian men would no longer be forced to shave.
From then on, they could wear whatever style of facial
hair they wished, but in return they would have to
pay a yearly beard tax. The amount owed varied depending

(07:01):
on one's social standing. A wealthy merchant could expect to
pay about a hundred roubles per year, while a nobleman
or military official would have to shell out as much
as six hundred roubles for the right to wear an
unfashionable beard. As for bearded peasants, they had to pay
as well, but only on the rare occasions when they

(07:21):
visited a city. Their tax was also considerably smaller, amounting
to just one or two copex a year. To keep
the system running smoothly, beard lovers were issued a beard
token to prove that they had paid their tax for
the year. These small coins were stamped with the words
money paid and featured in engraving of the lower half

(07:43):
of a man's face, complete with a nose, mouth, mustache,
and beard. The tokens were minted in two different metals,
copper for commoners and silver for nobles. As time went on,
Peter's crusade against facial hair began to look less less sustainable.
For instance, in seventeen o five, a division of the

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Russian military took a stand against the beard tax and
launched an open rebellion in the town of Ostrahan. They
refused to shave, pay the tax or where foreign clothing
of any kind, claiming that to do so would be
an insult both to God and to their Russian heritage.
Their small scale revolt was put down with ease, but

(08:27):
hundreds of rebels were killed in the process, which of
course made Peter and his beard tax look pretty bad. Nonetheless,
the unpopular tax remained on the books until seventeen seventy two,
nearly fifty years after the death of Peter the Great.
It was finally repealed by Catherine the Great, much to

(08:47):
the delight of her subjects. If you're like me, you're
probably thinking an authentic Russian beard token would be a
pretty cool curio to add to your collection, But Alas,
most of the coins were eventually melted down once the
tax had been repealed, and only a few thousand are
known to exist today. Still, it couldn't hurt to keep

(09:08):
an eye on eBay just in case. I'm Gabe Blusier
and hopefully you now know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. If you enjoy today's episode
and you want to see a beard token for yourself,
check us out on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at t
d i HC Show, And if you have any comments

(09:31):
or suggestions, feel free to pass them along by writing
to This Day at I heart media dot com. Thanks
to Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thank you
for listening. I'll see you back here again tomorrow for
another day in History class.