A scholarly journal from the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) Södertörn University, Stockholm.
Special Issue 2023, 3 Youth and authoritarian
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6 articles tagged with vegatarian were found.
Corinna Treitel, Department Chair and Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis, in conversation with Julia Malitska on dreams about and attempts at dietary reform in the 19th and 20th centuries, and on German life reformers and their long lasting, but forgotten, impacts on the ways we think today about eating naturally and environmentally consciously.
In this special section, the histories of dietary reform have been approached and explored from different perspectives. The essays weave together threads of the history of dietary advice and nutritional standards with social history, women’s history and food history, covering the elements of life reform and women’s movements, the establishment of communist food ideology, etc.
This article investigates the ideas of correct and modern nutrition during the early communist period in Bulgaria and outlines their relationship to previously existing ideas and practices. The research reveals the multiple influences of pre-communist food ideologies, particularly those of the vegetarian movement that flourished in the country in the 1920s and 1930s. It questions the propaganda claim that the communist regime introduced a radically new understanding of and approach to nutrition. It also suggests that there were significant differences between the attitudes towards meatless diets in Eastern European communist countries. The hostility towards vegetarianism was not equally strong and consistent across the bloc, and despite the evident influence of Soviet teachings focused on meat-based, protein-rich diets, nutritionists introducedmeatless diet “through the back door”.
This article considers the spread of ideas on vegetarianism in Estonia from the turn of the 19th century until 1940. The study builds on analyzing archival sources, media texts and educational work conducted by nutrition experts, schools and organizations. Propaganda about the consumption of vegetarian food was associated with the general modernization of domestic culture and the discourse on healthy food as the basis for the nation’s vitality. The article highlights the leading role of women’s movement in home economics, including attempts to implement food culture informed by nutritional science, especially teaching the people to eat more fruits and vegetables. The spread of vegetarian ideas in Estonia also illustrates how the previously dominating German cultural influences were gradually replaced by an orientation towards the Nordic countries, and demonstrates how these ideas were adapted to an Estonian context.
In this article, I tackle and reflect on the vegetarian movement of the Russian empire in its making, branding, and imagining by examining the All-Russian Vegetarian Congress in Moscow in 1913. By scrutinizing its organization, agenda and resolutions, the study brings to the surface and explores the ideological imaginaries and the dynamics of vegetarian collective action. I discuss the organization and convening of the congress, analyze the discursive activity around it, as well as hint at its implications for the fledgling vegetarian activism. I also contextualize the event within a broad reform-oriented social movement space, as well as spotlight the diversity of understandings of vegetarianism. The case study hints at the manifestations of movement making and branding, as well as unfolds the ideological foundations that were given preferences and why this was so. The congress apparently favored the ethical strand of vegetarianism and aimed at life reform in a broader sense. However, it did not really succeed in bringing about the long-awaited consolidation and unification of the vegetarians in the country.
Unlike British or American vegetarian movements which arose during the 19th century, organized vegetarianism did not emerge in the Russian empire until the turn of the century. By the 1910s, a network of vegetarian circles flourished across the empire. Odessa presents a fascinating case study for examining dietary reform and vegetarianism. Using diverse sources, the article explores the evolution and implementation of grassroot vegetarian activism in the city of Odessa by focusing on its institutionalization and infrastructure, as well as on ideas, practices and activists. It scrutinizes the motives that guided actions, unfolds alliances and challenges that arose, and how these played out in practice, and identifies popularization strategies for vegetarian ideas, and forms of vegetarian consumption. The study sheds light on an unknown page of the history of Odessa and the Black Sea Region, as well as enriching existing knowledge of the histories of imperial and European borderlands.
Baltic Worlds covers; the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, Russia, Caucasus and the Balkan area.