The Beard Tax: Peter the Great's War on Russian Facial Hair

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In 1698 Tsar Peter I came home from a grand tour of Western Europe convinced that Russia had to look modern, and he started with men's faces. Police were authorized to stop bearded men, demand payment, and shave those who could not pay in the public square. For many Orthodox Christians the beard was a religious requirement, part of being made in the image of God, so the decree forced a choice between the state and the soul. When Peter could not shave an empire by force, he taxed it instead, with rates scaled to rank and paid in what amounted to pounds of silver.

This episode follows the beard tax as a lesson in state power and failed economics. Courtiers, officials, and ordinary merchants owed 60 rubles a year, wealthy merchants 100, Muscovites 30, and peasants paid two half-kopeks each time they entered a city. Yet from 1705 to 1708 the tax brought in an average of only 3,588 rubles a year, since most people simply shaved and enforcement ate the proceeds. The story then moves to France, to a persistent Tudor myth, and to Yemen, where the idea was turned upside down.

• Payers received metal beard tokens stamped with a nose, mouth, and bushy beard on one side and the double-headed eagle on the other. Only two of the earliest copper specimens from 1698 and 1699 are known to survive.
• Later tokens were minted in a diamond shape, dated in Western Arabic numerals instead of Cyrillic, and inscribed with the phrase the beard is a superfluous burden.
• Catherine the Great finally repealed the Russian tax in 1772.
• The bearded King Francis I of France won papal approval to tax the beards of priests to fund his wars, which left wealthy court clergy bearded and poor village priests shaved.
• The claim that Henry VIII and Elizabeth I taxed beards has no documentary support in the UK National Archives, while Yemen in 1936 charged clean-shaven men a tax in lieu of growing one.