This book explores Eastern European consumer cultures in the twentieth century, taking a comparative perspective and conceptualizing the peculiarities of consumption in the region. Contributions cover lifestyles and marketing strategies in imperial contexts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; urban consumer cultures in the Interwar Period; and consumer and advertising cultures in the Soviet Union and its satellite republics. It traces the development of marketing throughout the century, and the changes in society brought about by democratization and the 'Americanization' of consumption. Taken together, the essays gathered here make a valuable contribution to our understanding of consumption and advertising in the region.  

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, the development of modern food safety and food security, etc. Three peer-reviewed articles focusing on the case studies of Estonia, Bulgaria and the Russian empire are built on previously untapped sources and offer original perspectives on the topic. As the contributions suggest, the entangled histories of dietary reform efforts proved to be a valuable and novel prism through which to study the region and the history of Europe in general. 

This article examines how The Vegetarian Review, the monthly periodical founded in Kishinev and published in Kiev from 1910-1915, and the emerging vegetarian activism, enabled, re-affirmed and empowered each other. The focus of the article is on the periodical’s emergence, logistical aspects of its production, ideological settings, form, content, rationale, (re)presentational strategies, as well as the imaginaries constructed and articulated on its pages. By bridging the fields of periodical studies with the history of social activism in Eastern Europe, the role of the advocacy journal in promoting reform agenda and its potential for forging a community of values and a shared identity formation are discovered. Vegetarianism, as the study showcases, had been defined, debated, advocated, invented and negotiated on the pages of The Vegetarian Review through interaction between scribes, editors, readers, practitioners and activists; and its genre fostered, staged and empowered these exposures. 

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.

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.

Unlike the British, American, or Central European vegetarian movements, which emerged in the nineteenth century, organized vegetarianism did not emerge in the Russian Empire until the turn of the century. By the 1910s, enthusiasts had formed vegetarian societies and developed an infrastructure in many of the empire’s cities. Drawing on mainstream literature and utilizing a variety of primary sources, this article examines vegetarian eating establishments started by vegetarian activists in the early twentieth century. It uncovers the rationale behind its emergence, ideological framework and disputes, and the mechanisms that brought it to life, showcasing the collective efforts to promote a vegetarian dietary regimen and worldview. I argue that vegetarian canteens appeared as multifunctional venues resulting from a fledgling vegetarian activism. Finally, the study unveils what was served and eaten in the vegetarian canteens of the early twentieth century, shedding light on urban vegetarian cuisine(s) in terms of its form and content in some European parts of the Russian Empire.

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.