Reform of domestic dental education in the first years of Soviet power

The reform of dental education began in the RSFSR in 1918, when the People's Commissariat adopted a regulation according to which dental schools (secondary educational institutions that trained dentists in pre-revolutionary Russia) were to be closed, and odontological units and departments for pathology and therapy of dental diseases, prosthetic technology, surgery of the jaws and oral cavity were opened at the medical faculties of universities. The establishment of odontological departments did not allow a significant increase in the ranks of odontologists, since students had to spend as much time on studying dentistry as future doctors, and received only the right to practice dentistry and an incomplete medical education. The proposal to revive dental schools to meet the needs of the population in dental care by specialized professionals met with fierce resistance from the head of the dental subsection of the RSFSR People's Commissariat of Health P.G. Dauge, who considered secondary education unacceptable. The article describes the discussion that unfolded on this issue, as a result of which odontological departments were created at the medical faculties of universities, the number of dentists decreased, and the preventive direction proposed by P.G. Dauge, as a method of reducing the country's need for dental specialists, became one of the main ones in Soviet dentistry.