19th century
Dress persecution
1ᵉʳ mai 1850·Empire russe
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
an ukase prohibits the caftan and the sidelocks, under penalty of fine then forced cutting of hair by the police
The ukase banned the long caftan and the sidelocks — that is, what was visible. Refusal was punished first with a fine, then with forced cutting of the hair by the police, carried out in the street or at the station. The measure was aimed less at clothing than at recognition: its purpose was to erase, within the Russian Empire, the outward sign of belonging. It was applied with zeal in certain provinces, half-heartedly in others, and gave rise to a trade in exemptions. For traditional circles, the forced shearing was experienced as a desecration, and it is this memory, more than the fine, that the Yiddish literature of the following century retained from those years.
- Period :
- 19th century
- Type :
- Persecution
- Region :
- Central and Eastern Europe
- Country :
- Empire russe
Simon Doubnov, *Histoire des Juifs de Russie et de Pologne* ; Michael Stanislawski, *Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews* ; *Encyclopaedia Judaica*, article « Russia ».