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Peter the Great’s Beard Tax

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Re: Peter the Great’s Beard Tax

#81

Post by trhway »

rexreed wrote: post #77

Let's not pretend that there wasn't serious, and at times deadly, anti-semitic overtones to the requirement to shave beards, and the financial penalties that came from seeking exemption. The Beard Tax was notoriously leveraged against religious jews, forbidden by law to shave their beards. The "civilized" authorities took much advantage of this.

sorry, man, you did misfire here. There is of course no question about antisemitism in Russia, it is just that the Russia of Peter the Great didn't have a number of Jews, especially not converted ("religious jews, forbidden by law to shave their beards"), to speak about. The beard tax was really a symbol of breaking the conservative Russian opposition (like that top nobility - "boayre" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyar#/media/File:Bojaren.jpg).

FYI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Russian_Em...

"Before the 18th century Russia maintained an exclusionary policy towards Jews, in accordance with the anti-Jewish precepts of the Russian Orthodox Church. When asked about admitting Jews into the Empire, Peter the Great stated "I prefer to see in our midst nations professing Mohammedanism and paganism rather than Jews. They are rogues and cheats. It is my endeavor to eradicate evil, not to multiply it.""

Re: Peter the Great’s Beard Tax

#82

Post by dotcommand »

sandworm101 wrote: post #38
vagrantJin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while it might not be PC to say so, this could be a constructive thing That's called euro-centrism isn't it. And every westerner believes wholeheartedly that it is the best most constructive thing to do. So it is neither right nor wrong politically. But it does dull the world when every place you go to is Europe in microcosm. That is a true vision of dystopian hell itself.

Countries are allowed to change. A country choosing to adopt the ways of another is only evil if it is forced upon them by outsiders. The leader of Turkey wanted to take his country in a particular direction. That is a valid local decision by a local leader. What is euro-centric is to dictate to those local leaders, to tell countries that they shouldn't change their culture as they see fit. Other countries are not mu…

> A country choosing to adopt the ways of another is only evil if it is forced upon them by outsiders.

You are ignoring the fact that the ottoman empire had been invaded by european powers for hundreds of years and ultimately destroyed by european powers. And that european powers were threatening to destroy Turkey completely unless the turks "bent the knee".

You are painting a rather biased picture of what the "leader of Turkey" did. It was under duress - real threat of national disintegration and even genocide. It wasn't that Ataturk wanted to take Turkey in a particular direction, it was that external forces gave him no choice. It was either submit his european masters or cease to exist.

Neither Ataturk nor Turkey was in a position to take their country wherever they wanted. They were essentially a vanquished nation and pretty much had no choice but to do as the europeans powers ( and later on america ) told them to.

> Other countries are not museums needing protection from change.

Sure, but they aren't mimics either that exist to mindlessly copy or be forced to copy the world's biggest bullies.

In an ideal world, countries can copy from others what they choose, but that's sadly not how the world works. The most brutal force their "values" on the weaker.

Re: Peter the Great’s Beard Tax

#83

Post by trhway »

nIHOPp6MQw0f5ut wrote: post #34
soperj wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take an objective look at the USSR from 1917 to 1990, while there was a lot of bad things, they also completely industrialized the country, literacy rates went from 28% to 99.7% (triple it in the first 15 years, by trying to teach everyone to read their native language first instead of Russian first). They were the first country to put a man in space. I'm not sure that it was all disastrous.

The west industrialized without gulags.

>The west industrialized without gulags.

it was called "colony" back then and Western Europe was doing it for several centuries. For example the wonderful rubber being a major part of the European technological leap at the end of 19th - beginning of 20th century was produced in Belgian Congo where not doing your daily quota would for example result in your family members mutilated or killed:

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48533964

"How to get that rubber, as much and as quickly as possible?

In the absence of scruples, the answer was distressingly simple. Send armed men to a village, kidnap the women and children, and if their menfolk did not bring back enough rubber, chop off a hand - or kill a family."

Re: Peter the Great’s Beard Tax

#84

Post by dotcommand »

nIHOPp6MQw0f5ut wrote: post #34
soperj wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take an objective look at the USSR from 1917 to 1990, while there was a lot of bad things, they also completely industrialized the country, literacy rates went from 28% to 99.7% (triple it in the first 15 years, by trying to teach everyone to read their native language first instead of Russian first). They were the first country to put a man in space. I'm not sure that it was all disastrous.

The west industrialized without gulags.

No. We just exterminated countless indigenuous peoples/nations and stole their land. Not to mention stealing resources/capital from china, india, middle east, africa, etc plunging much of the world into unimaginable poverty from which many still haven't recovered. Nothing as terrible as the gulags...

Re: Peter the Great’s Beard Tax

#85

Post by Barrin92 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #38
vagrantJin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while it might not be PC to say so, this could be a constructive thing That's called euro-centrism isn't it. And every westerner believes wholeheartedly that it is the best most constructive thing to do. So it is neither right nor wrong politically. But it does dull the world when every place you go to is Europe in microcosm. That is a true vision of dystopian hell itself.

Countries are allowed to change. A country choosing to adopt the ways of another is only evil if it is forced upon them by outsiders. The leader of Turkey wanted to take his country in a particular direction. That is a valid local decision by a local leader. What is euro-centric is to dictate to those local leaders, to tell countries that they shouldn't change their culture as they see fit. Other countries are not mu…

> A country choosing to adopt the ways of another is only evil if it is forced upon them by outsiders.

it's also quite a bad idea if it is forced upon your nation by an autocrat who tries to 'modernize' or secularize his own population without really considering if that's what they want.

Modernizers like Atatürk had nothing to do with genuine change, they were trying to impose copied values from countries they perceived to be superior onto their own populations. Same thing happened in India, or for a while in China. Today you can see pretty much every single one of these civilizations reasserting their own identity and ways of life, which are thousands of years old, not decades.

Countries should change, but they should change according to their own unique values and history, not because foreign educated or inspired elites try to impose 'Western' ideals on them out of a sense of inferiority. That world is over and it's coming crashing down quick.

Relevant reading: https://www.noemamag.com/the-attack-of-the-civilization-stat...

Re: Peter the Great’s Beard Tax

#86

Post by defterGoose »

divs1210 wrote: post #75
alex_young wrote: post #65

This was one of the pet peeves of the Lykov family, descendants of persecuted beard wearers, to the point that they moved into the wilderness of Siberia for 40 years, missing any notion of WW2 in the process: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-rus...

thanks for this! very interesting rabbit hole!

If you search youtube, theres an excellent video of a hiker going out to see the last remaining Lykov (Agafia i think). Its a beautiful area and a fascinating story.

Re: Peter the Great’s Beard Tax

#87

Post by shadilay »

romwell wrote: post #24
hereforphone wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spend a couple years in Italy. Spend a couple years in Syria. Come back and tell me which you prefer.

Italy wasn't the nicest place to be in during the 1940s, which would be a fair comparison as far as war-torn states go

Most people would still pick wartime Italy to wartime Syria.

Re: Peter the Great’s Beard Tax

#88

Post by boxerab »

soperj wrote: post #17
boxerab wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just perception - there was a very real conflict in the 19th century between traditional Russian values and western ideas such as nihilism and socialism. Dostoevsky was such an idealist in his youth, then turning his back on those movements after being imprisoned in hard labor camp. In his book Demons, he very much groks the dangers of these western ideas, which led to the disastrous 70 year reign of the Bolshevi…

If you take an objective look at the USSR from 1917 to 1990, while there was a lot of bad things, they also completely industrialized the country, literacy rates went from 28% to 99.7% (triple it in the first 15 years, by trying to teach everyone to read their native language first instead of Russian first). They were the first country to put a man in space. I'm not sure that it was all disastrous.

read Gulag Archipelago, then get back to me.

Re: Peter the Great’s Beard Tax

#89

Post by vimy »

dotcommand wrote: post #84
nIHOPp6MQw0f5ut wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The west industrialized without gulags.

No. We just exterminated countless indigenuous peoples/nations and stole their land. Not to mention stealing resources/capital from china, india, middle east, africa, etc plunging much of the world into unimaginable poverty from which many still haven't recovered. Nothing as terrible as the gulags...

The West created the modern world and lifted billions out of poverty.

Re: Peter the Great’s Beard Tax

#90

Post by euler2100 »

defterGoose wrote: post #86
divs1210 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks for this! very interesting rabbit hole!

If you search youtube, theres an excellent video of a hiker going out to see the last remaining Lykov (Agafia i think). Its a beautiful area and a fascinating story.

https://youtu.be/tt2AYafET68 This is the video, amazing story indeed.
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