Everything has a history, comrades.

‘Pro Barba! An Historical Inquiry into the Causes of the Popularity of Karl Marx’s Beard in Russia’ by Isaac Hourwich from Soviet Russia (New York). Vol. 3 No. 24. December 11, 1920.

H.G. WELLS in his recent contribution to the New York Times has touched upon a question that must interest every Anglo-Saxon mind. He tells us that he had never wasted his time upon the abstruse speculations of Karl Marx until they were forced upon his attention during his stay in Russia, where the whiskers of that closet savant obtruded themselves upon his gaze wherever he went. The frame of mind of the great British novelist has brought back to the present writer memories of the early days of the Russian immigration to the United States, some thirty years ago, when the 100 per cent Anglo-Saxon dwellers of the Water Front, especially of the younger generation, gave expression, in various vigorous ways to their aversion to the beards of the newcomers. We are tempted to paraphrase the familiar physical law by suggesting one of our own creation, to wit: “Anglo- Saxon nature abhors a beard.”

These preliminary reflections have led us some- what astray from the subject of our inquiry, “Why the beard of Karl Marx is so popular in Russia?” Mr. Wells is unfortunately unaware of the close connection of whiskers and politics in Russian history. Prior to the reign of Peter the Great, all adult Russian males were bewhiskered. That Russian revolutionary monarch, after returning from his voyage to the western lands, decreed that all his subjects of the upper classes were to shave off their beards. This decree aroused great discontent, which led to conspiracies upon the life of the monarch as well as to open rebellions. The heard was sanctified in the minds of the disaffected by the observation that all saints of the Creek Catholic Church had worn beards. The decree directing the subjects of the great Czar to shave their beards was one of the counts in the popular indictment charging him with being the “Anti-Christ”.

The act of Peter the Great remained in force for more than a century and a half, Shaving was obligatory for the nobility and the office-holding class. Even in private life the discharged soldier was admonished “to shave his beard and to beg no alms,” There were two styles of shaving prescribed by the law, one for the civilians, another for the army. The civilian was required by law to shave his mustache and chin, the military man was permitted to retain his moustache, but he was required to shave his chin. Whatever the critics of Czardom may hold against it, it is an historical fact that in the enforcement of that particular statute a certain amount of reasonable freedom was left to individual taste. The civilian was at liberty to wear side- whiskers without restriction of size, — either of the British banker style, or like those of the late John Stuart Mill, and of course he enjoyed the privilege to exhibit to the world a smooth-shaven countenance. The army man was likewise at liberty to add side whiskers to his moustache, or to confine him- self to a moustache of the Anglo-American style, as exemplified by the picture of Mr. Wells himself.

In the fifth decade of the nineteenth century, a strong movement in fiver of whiskers developed among the Russian intellectuals of that period. The remarkable feature of that movement was that it succeeded in uniting on that one issue the two warring factions of the intelligentsia, the “Occidentalists” and the “Slavophiles”. The latter, who condemned the tendency of the St. Petersburg period of Russian history to imitate the ways of “the rotten west”, affected the old Russian style of clothes and defiantly wore whiskers. The Occidentalists, who studied in German universities, came under the influence of “Young Germany”, which repudiated the ways of the Prussian Police-State and favored the return to Nature. The principal character in one of the novels of Zschocke, a popular writer of that day, argues in favor of the beard as the masculine weapon with which Nature has endowed man to captivate the heart of woman. All Russian writers of that period wore full beards, vide Herzen, Bakunin, Turgenyev, Byelinsky, etc.This seditious tendency, of course, could not escape the eyes of the government. Emperor Nicholas I (penned by Count Leo Tolstoy under the name of Nikolai Palkin), on one of his visits to Germany, ordered the Russian students of the Berlin University to present themselves to him. One of them had the hardihood to appear before his sovereign with a moustache on his face. The Emperor directly ordered him to shave off that appendage, which was the privilege of military men only.

The enforcement of that law was relaxed under the benign rule of his son, Alexander II, the Czar-Liberator. An inspection of the pictures of the writers of that generation would reveal to the disgusted gaze of Mr. Wells a series of bearded faces. The one exception known to the present writer is Chernyshevsky, who before his exile to Siberia had a smooth-shaven face, although he had reached the age at which he was physically capable of growing a beard. But even that exception soon yielded to the spirit of the time. He returned from his twenty-year exile in the wilds of Siberia with a fairly long beard, which he retained until his death (1889).

Liberal high school teachers of that “epoch of great reforms” dared grow moustaches and chin beards, and the principals, falling in with the prevailing spirit, would wink at that exhibition of license. But whenever the Curator of the Educational District (an official representing the ministry of education) would come on a tour of inspection. the teachers would report with their moustaches and chins duly shaved.

At last even in Russia the government had to yield to public opinion. Alexander III, shortly after ascending to the throne of his fathers, repealed the law regulating the shaving of male faces. This must by no means be construed, however, into a concession to Liberalism. Alexander III was a strong Nationalist, and his enabling act permitting his loyal subjects to wear beards was a belated tribute to the old Slavophiles. It is the tragedy of history that ungrateful posterity has quite forgotten this act of Alexander III, indeed, the only liberal reform enacted by that monarch.

A useful lesson may be drawn from this brief essay of a history of beards in Russia. So long as the wearing of beards was prohibited by law, the spirit of sedition delighted in showing an unshaved face, as it were, to law and order. Directly after the repeal of the anti-whiskers legislation, diversity of barber styles freely displayed itself among the Russian intelligentsia. Every student of Russian literature knows that one of the most popular Russian writers, Maxim Gorky, shaves his whiskers and wears only a moustache, even as the author of “New Worlds for Old.” Such are the beneficent effects of liberty.

Soviet Russia began in the summer of 1919, published by the Bureau of Information of Soviet Russia and replaced The Weekly Bulletin of the Bureau of Information of Soviet Russia. In lieu of an Embassy the Russian Soviet Government Bureau was the official voice of the Soviets in the US. Soviet Russia was published as the official organ of the RSGB until February 1922 when Soviet Russia became to the official organ of The Friends of Soviet Russia, becoming Soviet Russia Pictorial in 1923. There is no better US-published source for information on the Soviet state at this time, and includes official statements, articles by prominent Bolsheviks, data on the Soviet economy, weekly reports on the wars for survival the Soviets were engaged in, as well as efforts to in the US to lift the blockade and begin trade with the emerging Soviet Union.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/srp/v3n24-dec-11-1920-soviet-russia.pdf