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History

At the same time, they enable us to understand why Peter cherished such bitter hostility against the ancient order of things, and so disliked the peoples existent mode of life, and so persistently persecuted the outward symbols in which the notions and the bigotries of the past still found expression.

It was an attitude further accentuated by his early political education, which had caused his every political idea and sentiment to attain development amongst turmoil and confllict as, with the Russian community divided into two mutually hostile camps, the pro- tagonists of innovation, the party advocating Western European exemplars and assistance, had warred with the politico-ecclesiastic, old-believing sec- tion.

An institution particularly dear to the hearts of this section was the system of external distinction which, with the beard and a special sartorial mode as its leading signs, had from earliest times demarcated the ancient Russian from the denizen of Western Europe; and though Peter cannot well have considered these features to be inimical to reform in themselves, he evidently regarded them as cover for certain convictions and sentiments, and found them smack of opposition, and symbolise protest, and therefore, being himself ranged on the side of innovation, yearned always to join issue with what he believed to cloak the conservatives cult of tradition.

And he would attach the more importance to these trifles because of the impressions gathered during his boyhood, gathered during the period when trifles of the sort had figured exclusively on Strieltzi and Old Believers on - persons, that is to say, in rebellion against the State.

Yes, that must have been the reason why he came so instinctively to view the old-established Russian beard as something beyond a mere physical feature of the masculine countenance, and to class it with the pristine long-skirted habit as a sign, as a mark, of a certain political attitude, of opposition to the States authority.