In the summer of 1843, eleven reformers in Massachusetts embarked upon a doomed utopian experiment called “Fruitlands.” Their object was to create a perfect society, devoid of the negative influences of capitalism, trade, and government. They planned on doing so through rigorous adherence to strict communal regulations, among which was strict veganism. This article argues that the Fruitlands experiment—though a failure—is instructive because it provides a detailed example of one particular articulation of the tie between veganism and anarchism. Unlike more modern reformers, the Fruitlanders stressed hierarchy (rather than equality) between humans and animals. Rejecting the animal world was crucial for them as they attempted to become perfect beings, eligible for utopia. Fruitlands thus showcases the way that the vegan-anarchic tie has been profoundly different in each of its incarnations, and therefore an illustrative lens into the political and social world of the nineteenth century.

This introduction examines how food and foodways were used in Russia and in the Communist Bloc nations of Eastern and Central Europe as a means of envisioning and implementing the idea of a utopian future in the here and now. In the case of Russia, food imagery had been utilized in nineteenth-century literature to imagine the ideal community, which became a political and economic necessity after the October Revolution of 1917. Loudly proclaimed ideals of modernity and progress required tangible results, such as an abundance of cheap and healthy food. Local variants of this followed the spread of Soviet influence to Eastern Europe after World War II. Here new foodways and technologies were likewise introduced in order to create the “dreamworlds” of the future. The fall of communism (1989–91) brought about the need to reimagine culinary landscapes, both as a critique of socialism and—later—as a response to twenty-first-century globalization and homogenization.