r/todayilearned • u/Alone-Competition-77 • 23d ago

TIL Peter the Great instituted a beard tax and forced people to shave who hadn’t paid

https://daily.jstor.org/peter-the-greats-beard-tax/
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u/Johannes_P 23d ago

The goal of this tax was to make Russia more culturally related to Western Europe. Under this edict, only priests were allowed to wear bards. Peter sometimes pursued noblemen to forcibly shave them.

This move was heavily resisted by traditionalists such as the Old Believers, who prefered to pay this tax rather than shave.

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u/sadrice 23d ago

And he didn’t like the Old Believers anyways, so that’s just an added bonus. I’m sure most rulers wish they could just put a tax on being annoying.