Why do Russian men like to wear earrings?

For Russian men, earrings are more than just jewelry.

It is a fact that, from ancient times, Russian warriors began to pierce their ears. According to Russia Beyond, the earrings are considered by warriors as an amulet against evil forces, and also implicitly reveal the status of the wearer.

The more expensive the jewelry, the more patterns and gems, the more it proves the owner's nobility. Of course, it was not only the nobility in Russia who wore earrings. For commoners, they would wear copper earrings with a simple design.

The earring in the painting "Ivan Tsarevich on a Gray Wolf" by Vasnetsov.

During the 17th-18th centuries, Russian aristocratic men's earrings fell out of favor and were worn mainly by the Cossacks, as well as by European sailors, soldiers, and craftsmen. By the early 19th century, men's earrings began to become popular again and flourished especially among the soldiers of the cavalry regiments.

In the early 20th century, men wore earrings as a Cossack "personal identity". However, during the Soviet era, jewelry in general and earrings in particular were judged to be unsuitable for the image of citizens. Not only earrings, Soviet officials and workers did not even wear rings when they were considered "bourgeois" items.

Portrait of a Russian man wearing an earring circa 1610-1620.

For a long time after that, men wearing earrings remained "unthinkable" in the Soviet Union. It was only in the 1980s that this item made a comeback, when it was "promoted" by rock artists and "bad guys" in Russia.

However, they are almost exclusively worn on the left ear. Since the 2010s, with the globalization of world fashion, this distinction has almost disappeared. Today, men in Russia, like the rest of the world, wear not only ear piercings, but also "piercing" in many other areas of the ear. And perhaps the ancient Russian warriors as well as the Cossacks would certainly approve of this.