State Policy in Trading Alcoholic Drinks in the Partnership with the Board of Guardians on Public Temperance (The Historic Aspect of the End of XIX – Beginning of XX Centuries)

Abstract

The article considers the historic experience of state and public organizations’ partnership in the struggle against the population’ alcoholization by the example of establishing Boards of guardians on public temperance in the Russian state as a whole and in Ufa province in particular. The authors of the article pay special attention to the organizing public readings by the Boards of guardians on public temperance with the aim to spread sensible ideas concerning the harm of excessive use of strong drinks among the population; the substantiation of the necessity of reviving the institution of guardianship and its methodological instruments, used by the state and public organizations in carrying out educational activity in order to struggle against the population’ alcoholization, has been given. The object of the research is the policy and practice of the Russian government in forming and improving the institution of guardianship in the sphere of public temperance in Ufa province (1865 – 1917) and the historic experience accumulated in this field. The aim of the research is to investigate the historic experience of forming the institution of guardianship on public temperance in Russia by the example of the activity in Ufa province in 1865 – 1917 on the basis of scientific analysis of archival and published sources. Relying on the concrete historic material, the authors set themselves as an object to elicit general regularities and regional peculiarities of the process of guardianship, to reveal the integrity and interdependence of its components. It has been exposed that the state policy in trading alcoholic drinks was accompanied by active, successive, diversified, legislatively formalized and methodologically supported basis. It was the activity of the Boards of guardians on public temperance on the territory of the Russian empire, in particular in Ufa province. It promoted to preventive and prophylactic measures, forming of the alcohol drinking culture among the population and, as a rule, decreasing of the index of its usage. Modern social and economic situation in Russia testifies to the necessity of reviving of the institution of guardianship by means of state and public partnership. This may be organizing of reading clubs, literary soirees in the system of cafes and restaurants, round tables in libraries, lectures and conferences on the theme in the Internet, creating of guardian groups in social nets.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6p127