Soviet health care is usually associated with the so-called Semashko system (named after the first Soviet People's Commissar of Public Health), with its centralized planning and administration and the declared equal and universal access to medical and pharmaceutical services. Thus, it is often neglected that the adoption of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921 actually introduced some market elements in the Soviet economy and legalized private entrepreneurship, including in the area of health care. The existence of private medicine and pharmaceutical business in Soviet Russia in the 1920s is unfortunately chronically understudied – and when mentioned, it is often presented with obsolete ideologically charged cliches – as a chaotic conglomerate of hucksters and quacks, driven only by the desire of profit. In my paper, however, I would like to present private health care in NEP Russia as an alternative to the Semashko system. This will naturally involve the investigation of the evolution of government policy towards private provision of health care and the regulation of private clinics and pharmacies, as well as the issues of financing, work motivation and profit etc. My hypothesis is that private entrepreneurship in medical and pharmaceutical spheres in early Soviet Russia was not at all doomed from the very beginning. In fact, it performed quite well in the difficult economic and administrative conditions and was able to complement state-funded health care in certain aspects. The reasons for its decline were primarily of administrative nature, since the Soviet state deliberately adopted a policy of prioritizing state institutions and pushing the private capital out of the economy by the end of the 1920s. The rhetoric that accompanied this decision actively employed the above-mentioned stereotypical images of private health care, but in fact disorderliness, incompetence and ineffectiveness remained inherent features of the government-funded medical and pharmaceutical institutions throughout the Soviet era. In my paper I would also like to pay particular attention towards comparative and transnational aspects of the problem. For example, the health care system in Weimar Germany also experienced socialization, but not to the same extent as in the Soviet Union. A comparative analysis of the status of private health care would contribute to a deeper understanding of political cooperation and knowledge transfer between the two countries in the inter-war period.