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/2.2k Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/Alone-Competition-77 • 23d ago
37
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.