Doc Chat Forty-Nine: The Barber of Moscow

By Julie Golia, Associate Director, Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books and Charles J. Liebman Curator of Manuscripts
April 14, 2022
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

On March 24, 2022, Doc Chat took a fresh look at one of the most iconic images in modern Russian culture. 

Woodbloc print of two men, one cutting the other's hair

Rare Book Division; NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 1162547.

weekly series from NYPL's Center for Research in the Humanities, Doc Chat pairs an NYPL curator or specialist and a scholar to discuss evocative digitized items from the Library's collections and brainstorm innovative ways of teaching with them. In Episode Forty-Nine, NYPL curator Bogdan Horbal and Duke University’s Ernest Zitser examined an 18th-century woodblock print (lubok) commonly known as “The Barber Wants to Cut the Beard of the Schismatic.” Horbal and Zitser analyzed the multiple layers of meaning etched in what, at first glance, appears to be a naïve folk design, revealing how popular culture stereotypes underwrite systemic discrimination.

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Below are some handy links to materials and sources suggested in the episode.

Episode Forty-Nine: Primary Sources

For color reproductions of 18th-century Russian popular prints (lubki) see D. A. Rovinskii, Russkie narodnye kartinki, 5 vols. (S.-Peterburg: Ekspeditsiia zagotovleniia gos. bumag, 1881).

For 18th-century Russian “interludes” featuring Old Believers, see P'esy stolichnykh i provintsial'nykh teatrov pervoi poloviny XVIII v., izd. podgot. O. A. Derzhavina ... [et al.] [Ranniaia russkaia dramaturgiia, t. 4] (Moskva: Nauka, 1975), 463-464, 489-495, 529-531, 555-556; and P'esy liubitel'skikh teatrov, izdanie podgotovili V. P. Grebeniuk ...[et al.]; pod redaktsieĭ A. I. Robinsona [Ranniaia russkaia dramaturgiia, t. 5] (Moskva: Nauka, 1976), 553, 616-620, 629-631, 655-657, 663-665.

For 18th-century Russian “interludes” featuring barber-surgeons and foreign doctors, see P'esy stolichnykh i provintsial'nykh teatrov pervoi poloviny XVIII v., izd. podgot. O. A. Derzhavina ... [et al.] [Ranniaia russkaia dramaturgiia, t. 4] (Moskva: Nauka, 1975), 468-471, 633, 674-675, 721; and P'esy liubitel'skikh teatrov, izdanie podgotovili V. P. Grebeniuk ...[et al.]; pod redaktsieĭ A. I. Robinsona [Ranniaia russkaia dramaturgiia, t. 5] (Moskva: Nauka, 1976), 742-748.

For the imperial decree “On collecting a special tax from bearded men and about their wearing a special dress” (oral decree April 6, 1722, published April 25, 1722), see Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii (S.-Peterburg: Tip. II Otd., 1830), 6: 641 (no. 3944).

Episode Forty-Nine: Readings and Resources

Dianne E. Farrell, "The Origins of Russian Popular Prints and their Social Milieu in the Early Eighteenth Century," Journal of Popular Culture, 17:1 (Summer 1983), 9-47.

Dianne Ecklund Farrell, "Medieval Popular Humor in Russian Eighteenth Century Lubki," Slavic Review, 50: 3 (Autumn 1991), /551-565.

Evgenii V. Akelev, "The Barber of All Russia: Lawmaking, Resistance, and Mutual Adaptation during Peter the Great’s Cultural Reforms," Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 17:2 (Spring 2016), 241–75.

E. Akelev, "When Did Peter the Great Order Beards Shaved?" Quaestio Rossica, 5:4 (2017), 1107–1130.

Lindsey Hughes, "'A beard is an unnecessary burden': Peter I's laws on shaving and their roots in early Russia," in Russian Society and Culture and the Long Eighteenth Century: Essays in Honour of Anthony G. Cross, edited by Roger Bartlett and Lindsey Hughes (Transaction Publishers, 2004), 21–34.

Evgenii V. Anisimov, The Reforms of Peter the Great: Progress Through Coercion in Russia; translated with an introduction by John T. Alexander (M.E. Sharpe, 1993).

Peter T. De Simone, The Old Believers in Imperial Russia: Oppression, Opportunism and Religious Identity in Tsarist Moscow (I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2018).

Robert O. Crummey, The Old Believers and the World of Antichrist: the Vyg Community and the Russian State, 1694-1855 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1970).

Georg B. Michels and Robert L. Nichols, eds., Russia's dissident Old Believers, 1650-1950, (University of Minnesota, 2009).

Malcolm Burgess, “Fairs and Entertainers in 18th-Century Russia,” The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 38, No. 90 (Dec. 1959), 95-113.

Lisa Warner, "The Russian Folk-Theatre: The Growth of Urban Influences and the Role of the Army," Folklore, Vol. 87, No. 2 (1976), 209-215.

Margaret Pelling, "Do you have a barber?" The Researcher’s View: Wellcome Library blog (November 30, 2015).

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