Борода в казне доходы
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М.В. Ломоносов, Гимн бороде (1757)
On 16 January 1705 Peter the Great issued a decree enforcing compulsory shaving for all members of the male population of Russia, excluding clergy and peasants. This decree signified a break with the cultural tradition of the Muscovite state, where beard shaving was seen as the defilement of man’s God-given image and a sin for which he would be condemned to eternal damnation. For Peter and his supporters, however, the habit of growing a long beard had become a kind of visual code signifying one’s belonging to an “impolite” (or uncivilised) people. The war on beards started straight after the tsar’s return from his first trip to Europe (as part of the Grand Embassy) in the autumn of 1698. At first, beard shaving was imposed upon members of the court either by personal order of the tsar’s or through playful-shaving “spectacles”. Yet after a few years the tsar made adecisive attempt to “Europeanise” the appeara...