TWT #248 –

On September 5th, 1698, Russian Tsar Peter The Great levied a country-wide tax on bearded men, officially vindicating any hipster who claims he has been discriminated against.

Let’s set the stage here as to how Peter Beard-Hater rose to power.

Feodor (which is just a cool way of spelling Theodore) III Alexeyevich of Russia was Peter’s half-brother and ruled as Tsar between 1676 and 1682. Unfortunately for Feodor he was born with a serious sickness that left him disabled, disfigured, and half-paralyzed. (Score one for Peter).

After Feodor died young at age 20, the throne rightfully should have gone to Peters other half-brother Ivan V. Luckily, Ivan was deemed “chronically ill and of infirm mind” (another score for Peter) and so a council of Russian nobles decided that a 10 year old was a better candidate as Tsar (checkmate).

Now, back to Peter himself. When he took the throne at age 10, there wasn’t much to do besides be a super rich 10 year old, so that’s what he did for a while.

However, as he got older he decided to take some actions of his own…

I’ll pause here for a minute for you to take a glance at what our “hero” looked like.

Do you notice anything about these pictures? Is anything curiously missing?

That’s right…PETER COULD NOT GROW A BEARD!

No wonder the guy hated dudes with long, luxurious facial hair – he was jealous! All he could manage was a little ‘stache, and nothing makes a Tsar angrier than having their little ‘stache laughed at.

So in 1698, when Peter was an angsty, 26-year-old young man in his prime, who could not grow a beard for the life of him, he decided to tax those who could. And everyone had to go along with it.

Like a good ruler, Peter didn’t just tax everyone evenly. The taxes were tiered based on your status in life.

Most everyone was charged 60 rubles per year to have a beard.

Wealthy merchants were charged slightly more, at 100 rubles

Muscovites (fantastic word for a Moscow native) were only charged 30 rubles

And finally the poorest peasants were only charged two half-kopeks every time they entered a city (does anyone know the kopek-to-ruble exchange rate? I assume these guys got an okay deal).

To prove you had paid your Beard Tax for the year, you had to carry around a “beard token” with you at all times. Which hilariously had a little picture of a nose, mustache, and beard on one side.

The edge of this coin stated that “the beard is a superfluous burden”

However, all good (I mean, terrible) things have to come to an end, and the beard tax was lifted in 1772 – a pretty good 74 year run for a tax on being a dirty hippy.

P.s. I love old paintings of babies, I think they are unequivocally the best things that came from History, so here is Peter the Great’s official baby-portriat.

Even as a baby everyone knew this guy would never be growing a beard.

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