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HistoryNor can there be very much doubt that he also itched to clothe and shave his subjects after the manner of foreign parts because he believed such a course to be calculated to contribute the more towards those subjects Western approximation, for when the news of a fresh Strieltzi outbreak in 1690 brought him hurrying back to Moscow it was then that, for the first time, he shaved the chins, and shortened the odnoriadoki and thferezi, of his entourage, and introduced wigs. Well, at this distance of time we can picture to ourselves but dimly the legislative and police hubbub which must have arisen from such a forcible thrusting of exotic coiffures and raiment upon the Russian subject: yet still we can picture it. True, it affected neither the clergy nor the peasantry, since always those two classes have preserved inviolate their corporate privileges of Conservatism and Orthodoxy; but, with regard to the other classes, an ukaz of January 1700 proclaimed, to beat of drum through street and square, that the ensuing Shrovetide was to see every man vested in an Hungarian kaftan, and in 1701 an ukaz added that thenceforth every man was to procure for himself also a jacket of either Saxon or Gallic cut, and wear it over a costume of German small-clothes, waistcoat, breeches, gaiters, boots, and cap, and every woman to disport herself in German boots and petticoat and bodice and head-covering. Also, for the purpose of promptly "running in" anyone who should be found to be wearing a beard or an illegal garment, the gates of every town were to have stationed at them inspectors of such articles, empowered then and there to strip the delinquent (as regards at least the offending garment) and reduce the clothing to shreds, whilst upon any dvorianin presenting himself either bearded or whiskered at an Imperial inspection there was to be inflicted the penalty of being "beaten without mercy. " Only Old Believers thenceforth might walk abroad bearded and in other than the regulation costume. prev next |