Abstract: The subject of the study is the conditions and features of the formation of the health care system and the fight against social diseases on the water transport of the Volga River basin in connection with the process of transition of the country to the realities of peacetime after the end of the Civil War. The relevance of the study is due to the insufficient development of this topic in historiography, as well as the reform of the healthcare sector at the present time. The author considers the activities of the medical and sanitary parts of the water transport health departments to combat alcoholism, venereal diseases, tuberculosis and malaria in the aspects of the organization of medical care, health education and the reorganization of the management of this area. The source base is the materials of the Central Archive of the Nizhny Novgorod region and the State Socio-Political Archive of the Nizhny Novgorod region. The author identifies the main features of the creation of a new system for ensuring the health of water workers in one of the most important transport hubs of central Russia. Data on the projects of reforming the health care system in water transport and the practice of their application are being introduced into scientific circulation. The main stages of the activity of the Volga District Health Department of the Volga Basin Inland Waterways Management are highlighted, the chronology and features of power-public interaction in the eradication of social diseases are clarified. The conclusion is made about the need for permanent public participation in solving medical and social problems.

Abstract: The subject of this research is the position of the leading teaching group in Russia regarding alcoholism as a social illness at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries. The current relevance of this topic is linked to its insufficient consideration in historiography. This article examines the social and scientific approaches of Russian teachers and school doctors to the development of a body of anti-alcoholism measures by way of identifying the reasons for the wide spreading of drinking and alcoholism, the elaboration of a system of social actions in the fight against them and the implementation of these developments in practice. The author enunciates the main approach to studying the “question of alcohol,” which was linked to the society’s processes of socio-economic development. The source base for this work consist of material from all-Russian pedagogical congresses at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. The foundation of this study is based on the principles of historicism, scientific objectivity and determinism. The author uses the methods of analysis, synthesis, comparative-historical and chronological. The novelty of this research consists in the resulting new information regarding the social essence, the specific-historical determinism and causes of widespread drinking and alcoholism, and the suggestions made by the teaching community for fighting this issue and their anti-alcoholism measures. For the first time in historiography the position of the most active representatives of the pedagogical community regarding this issue are presented. The author comes to the conclusion that members of the leading teaching group actively participated in the anti-alcoholism movement in Russia.