RUSSIA, November 11, 2004: (HPI note: This article is translated from the Russian newspaper Pravda.) Vegetarians of the planet have recently celebrated the day of Vegans – the most radical group of the movement. Vegetarianism is gathering pace in the world again, although the peak of the movement occurred in Europe in the beginning of the last century. The idea of the meat-free nourishment has changed a lot since that time, though.
The international statistics does not have any information about the number of people who do not eat meat because of their moral beliefs, not poverty. The percentage of vegetarians in Great Britain is rather low: only seven percent, or 4.2 million people. The number of Russian vegetarians is not known at all. The center of the vegetarian association told the Izvestia newspaper that about ten thousand Muscovites do not have meat dishes on their daily menus. However, only 264 vegetarians are registered on the website of the association.
The roots of the Russian vegetarianism of the XX century are clear. Peasants used to constitute the vast majority of the Russian population. They ate meat only on Sundays or on holidays. Russian fighters for people’s happiness used to associate meat with easy life, satiety and over-indulgence. Leo Tolstoy propagandized the idea of self-restraint, which implied vegetarianism too. Vegetarian restaurants and hospitals used to be very popular in Russia in those years. Nowadays Russians become vegetarians for two reasons: they either believe that eating meat is bad for health or they wish to express their outlook.
“Young people become more attracted to ideas of vegetarianism and veganism in particular,” Elena Marueva, the director of the center for protection of animals’ rights, said in an interview with the Izvestia. “We are moved with the idea of life without violence, without slaughtering animals and treating them brutally,” said she.
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