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For 11 Years, the Soviet Union Had No Weekends
- petermcneeley 8y ago"It was five days long, with days of rest staggered across the week. Now, the Soviet economist and politician Yuri Larin proposed, the machines need never be idle." This is actually totally sensible and was practiced in the factory where I once worked.
- waynecochran 8y agoTotally sensible? The whole thesis of the article is its failure.
- Avshalom 8y agoAnd yet find me the Walmart that's closed Sundays.
- waynecochran 8y agoYes. I do find we would be better off if these places were closed on Sundays. But this hardly compares to the forced labor of the USSR.
- AnarchoYeasty 8y agoHow. You are forced to work or you lose your job and your house, food, etc. Please tell me how our system was so much more moral than theirs. Where working at Walmart for 40+ hours a week still isn't enough to make rent. Where many people are working 2 or 3 jobs just to have a roof over their head and food on their table. Let me guess, you are a middle class white guy who never had to experience that, that's why you think our system is so much more moral.
- waynecochran 8y agoYou point about about the plight of the poor in any country including the US should be taken seriously. You comparison with Stalinist USSR is completely insane. Go read The Gulag Archipelago. Please.
- danharaj 8y agoThat's not a book of scholarship. Read an actual historical account of the gulag system. Trust me, its depressing enough without literary embellishment. And then compare it to the atrocities that established western capitalism. Fairly, I recommend.
- AnarchoYeasty 8y agoWhy would I read western propaganda? I'm not defending the Soviet Union, simply pointing out that the horrors y'all make up about them are largely made up, and that the United States does every one of them, if not worse, both to our own citizens and to people around the world. You think the Soviet Union was bad at silencing their enemies? The US assassinated Fred Hampton for telling black people they don't have to bow down anymore. They assassinated Allende in Chile because he had the audacity of being democratically elected and a socialist, and then backed a fascist (Pinochet) and helped him become one of the most murderous dictators in history. In Iran when the Mossadegh was democratically elected, he told BP gas that their monopoly on Iranian Oil was over. In return the US orchestrated a coup, installed a brutal dictator, and set up the Iranian secret police that we now view as the epitomy of evil. Eventually you are going to have to wake up and realize that the West has been the largest force for evil in the history of the world. And I'm not talking about Hitler.
- waynecochran 8y agoWestern Propaganda? Are you serious?
- monocasa 8y agohttps://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/world/natalya-reshetovskaya-84-is-dead-solzhenitsyn-s-wife-questioned-gulag.html https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/world/natalya-reshetovska...
- Pxtl 8y agoHonestly, this drives me nuts. Retail used to be a middle-class job... And now we're employing more people to work longer hours but less money per hour, so in the end the same amount of wages are paid but it's less livable for the individual employee. And for what? So we can get groceries at 10pm on a Sunday. The same amount of product is getting sold for the same amount of wages, it's just the wages are smeared across more hours.
- pgeorgi 8y agoGermany. That is, as long as Walmart had tried to fight German labour laws. They've since given up, so I guess it's really "Germany, in the past".
- ars 8y agoAnd yet they are open on Saturday. So I suspect it's more to do with the Christian religion than with preserving weekends. Can a store in Germany choose to close on Saturday and open on Sunday?
- dan-robertson 8y agoThere are lots of laws in different European countries about when businesses can open on Sundays. They typically have religious origin (aiming for all people being sober and able to go to church on Sunday) but most of those countries are not so religious now yet some of the laws remain. Perhaps it’s just inertia, or some interest in the laws staying the same (eg in the U.K. small shops can open longer hours on a Sunday), or maybe in some places the people don’t want the laws to change.
- hibbelig 8y agoSaturday used to be a workday. It might have remained a workday for shops to make it easier for the Monday to Friday, nine to five, people to go shopping. Shops used to close at 6:30pm, which made it difficult to do shopping after work. So being able to go shopping on Saturday was important.
- pgeorgi 8y agoSaturday is still legally considered a work day in Germany. One of the more important places to remember this today are public parking lots with usage limits on work days: those apply on Saturdays just like on Mo-Fr.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoCulture and Religion are deeply intertwined in most of the world, even if people are not particularly overtly religious, traditions and behaviours are integrated. It's pretty hard to convince regular people how they should change their ancient ways to make investors an extra buck.
- Udik 8y agoDon't most factories work like that?
- jpindar 8y agoNot in my experience, no. There are some that do, such as the ones running chemical processes that can't be stopped and restarted. The ones that are basically assembly lines putting parts together can stop on weekends.
- petermcneeley 8y agoWell the most interesting part is that the preferences of workers are reflected in salaries in a free market economy. So its usually more expensive to have night shifts and more expensive to have workers work on the weekends because these are less desirable working times.
- ozim 8y agoWhen it is some factories and some workplaces it is ok. When you try to adopt it nationwide it breaks down. Like in hospitality, hotels are not going to stop cleaning rooms on weekends. You are not going to close restaurants on weekends. So quite some people in services also have random days in week off.
- 8y ago
- soneil 8y agoIt is sensible, on the face of it. It just doesn't appear to scale. Once you and your partner are both on shifts, any semblance of a weekend is gone. I worked 3-on 2-off for a long time, it was fantastic. Then once I got a live-in partner, on a regular 9-5, I was unavailable for 40% of her weekends. That was a stretch. Add in kids, and it'll get even messier. If mom's day off is Tuesday, dad's day off is Thursday, and the kids have the weekend off? It works for the factory, but the more of the same family you put on opposing shifts, the messier it gets.
- TomK32 8y agoScheduling is hard but in a factory you have a wider range of workers in different life circumstances, add small factor to the pay on unpopular days and it could work. Here in Germany hairdressers are closed on Mondays because they are open on Saturdays. If we can finally move on to the four-workday-week we can also think about rescheduling work more flexible with the help of computers.
- rhacker 8y agoSo how many years has it been for the US?
- mijkal 8y agoExactly! US-style capitalism is at least as bad as the system described in the article. People living to work rather than working to live. :-/
- lurquer 8y agoAt least as bad? I'd recommend you use your weekend to read up on Stalinist Russia.
- severino 8y agoWritten by who? As far as the USSR doesn't exist anymore, it's not like people who never lived there, like me, can form an objective opinion about it.
- dogma1138 8y agoThe USSR collapsed less than 30 years ago finding people who lived during it on both sides isn’t hard neither it’s hard to find books on the subject from both sides of the iron curtain.
- severino 8y agoIt depends a lot on where you live. I've yet to meet anyone from the former Eastern block who was an adult by the time it collapsed. About books, that's the problem, they're all biased in one way or another. Some will depict East Germany as a police state living hell, while others describe it as a paradise as long as you didn't get involved in certain things. It's difficult to figure out what was it all about.
- jschwartzi 8y ago
- theodormarcu 8y agoIt was similar in Romania, but it lasted until 1989. The workweek was 6 days long. My parents dealt with it until the revolution. It’s funny how socialism was worse for the average worker in that way.
- crdoconnor 8y agoCeaucescu's hated austerity was because it was attempting to pay off the national debt to western countries. There are plenty of other notionally capitalist countries that have suffered bitterly under a similar kind of debt yoke (e.g. Greece).
- lostlogin 8y agoIs that socialism though? It did begin that way but sticking a label on a savage dictatorship doesn’t make it true.
- pjc50 8y ago"Dictatorship of the proletariat" necessarily collapses into plain dictatorship almost immediately, because there's no room for pluralism and dissenting factions. That's the problem with all the Leninist/Trotskyite/Maoist inheritors of Marxism. It was also the key difference between the social-democrat states of Europe west of the Berlin wall and the Communist states east of it.
- 8K71PS 8y agoNo it doesn't , DotP necessarily means factionalism and such, democratic centralism simply necessitates an agreement to be abided to by all constituents of said group
- dang 8y agoSince this account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle, we've banned it. That's not allowed here, because it destroys the intellectual curiosity this site exists for. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Much more explanation if anyone wants it: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20primarily%20line https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20ideological https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
- nkozyra 8y agoI'm unconvinced a prescribed two day set of days off is really the right way to balance work and leisure. People end up focusing on milestones like TGiF or humpday, working for the weekend, etc. As automation and globalism and remote work become more pervasive across industries, I hope to see more flexibility here rather than less. Culturally it would be unacceptable to take a random three day weekend and work 6 the next, but I think the benefit to mental health and productivity would be measurable. The always available culture in tech is a mess.
- maxerickson 8y agoYou are thinking pretty narrowly. Why not take a 3 day weekend to start the year and then do it again the next 51 weeks?
- kzrdude 8y agoI prefer a four day working week where you don't put the extra day on friday: a thee day weekend does not help your routine. Wednesday is the best for balance and recovery.
- czechdeveloper 8y agoProblem of this is that you generally need to work with other people and most productive way is to work at same hours.
- davidgh 8y agoThat definitively depends on the role you’re in. I often find my most productive hours are those when others are not pinging my by Slack, email, Skype, phone. I absolutely must have overlap time with others to keep things moving forward, but I find reducing overlap time is actually better.
- nkozyra 8y agoAbsolutely. But often not every day. And more often not in the same physical place.
- 8y ago
- prolikewh0a 8y agoThis article paints an entirely bad picture of Soviet Russia working conditions without going into the improvements they made over time. Working hours were not all that much different than modern USA, however they seemingly had better benefits. https://nintil.com/2016/04/03/the-soviet-union-working-hours/ https://nintil.com/2016/04/03/the-soviet-union-working-hours... >Then, in 1961-1967, they switched to 5 days per week, 8 hours per day, which finally gave the Soviets a real weekend, like those in the West. >In 1987, the maximum number of hours was limited to 40 per week, with more in some sectors (agriculture, construction, transport), and less in others (education, art and culture, or coal mining) >Soviets had 15 minimum days of paid holidays per week by then and 75% of workers had more than that. Workers younger than 18 were entitled to twice that. Working mothers with more than two children and less than 28 days of holidays per year, had three more days of holidays. Additionally, women had partial paid leave for infant care (<1 year), and they could take additional unpaid leave (<18 months)
- ericd 8y agoDon't forget the long, free vacations to Siberia for saying something bad about the government near your neighbor.
- secfirstmd 8y agoOr politically caused famine
- myth_drannon 8y agoOr you can become a homeless, unemployment person and have 365 days of vacation per year. Imagine that.... Err, sorry in Soviet Union you were not allowed to do that, these commies had to ruin the last bastion of human freedom! No worries, in the USA they still have it. I heard plenty of families take up on the opportunity.
- amai 8y agoBut retirement started at 55 for women and 60 for men. Russia changed that just recently.
- Fins 8y agoIt has something to do with the fact that few people live that long.
- jccalhoun 8y agoThere are lots of companies where this is done today. I worked in a casino and it was 4 on and 3 off with everyone having different days off. As real estate prices go up and up how long before white collar businesses try working in shifts so they can have offices that are half as big with people sharing desks?
- pintxo 8y agoSome already do. Mainly consulting though. Most employees there are at customer offices anyway.
- Trombone12 8y ago> It’s quite possible, argues Eviatar Zerubavel [...] that the calendar reform tied into a traditional Marxist aversion toward the family. Oh, right. This is from history.com, known from the Aliens-meme, so I shouldn't expect they asked someone who would actually know about the background...
- Muha_ 8y agoSoviet leaders had no choice. In 1920 the country was destroyed by civil war. Industry was absent. The people were starving. Society was split. Nobody has experience living without a Tsar. Nations within the country did not like each other. Fascism was arising in Europe, militarism in Asia. Everyone knew that time was short. The Soviet Union had to create powerful industry or be destroyed (and the apocalypse came very soon - in 1941). People did what they should and did not pay attention to stupidity, cruelty and injustice. All of this was secondary problem. Sovet Union managed to force Hitler to get stuck and retreat before Normandy landings. If it could not, Hitler would receive all resources of Russia and then the apocalypse would come to Great Britain and the USA...
- gandhium 8y agoJust the reminder - Soviet Union entered WW2 on _Hitler's_ side. So, they were preparing for war - but for the offensive one.
- Muha_ 8y agoThis is a myth based on a misconception about Russians. Stalin and USSR is not same. Hitler was not a friend. Fascism terrified all Russian people. Stalin dreaded Hitler and showed friendship in order to gain time. Hitler attacked Poland and it has no chances. The USSR just return the part of Belarus. Later, the Russians entered Europe as liberators from fascism, but they would never enter as conquerors. And, yes, later this liberation turn to ocupation for same reasons: if USSR was not strong it would have been isolated and destroed. And the Russians themselves stop all this and left Europe when they finally realized that communism will never work. Maybe the Russians are not the most pleasant people, but they didn’t do what the Germans did and communism is not fascism.
- entry 8y agoIt is not research but very fundamental lie. Author to proove what "Soviet Union had no weekends" give us the weekends plan. Well done. Worst of all the author does not explaining WHY weekends was limited in 193x, but this is most interesting. From point of view author and "experts with the same opinion" it was cancelled because it's failed. I bet it was cancelled because it did the trick. Here a Red pill for you: After 3 revolutions and 2 civilic wars, loosed WWI in begining of 20 centure Russia was in degrade state. People realized what conflict of WWI is not ended and it is means war will be repeated. "We are in 50–100 years behind the advanced countries. We must run this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us.", said Stalin in 1931. So walking whole country on weekends to churche may be good, but when somebody want's to kill people of you country in the middle of 20 centure you need aircrafts and tanks. To produce that you need fuel, technology, machine tools and people working hard. So what was the result of "had no weekends" for 10 years? Soviet Union with allies wins the WWII. I can't believe author and "experts" don't know that. I belive they just prefers ignore that. But WHY?
- Fins 8y agoYou do realize that all the production necessary to win the war was done by countries that did have weekends.
- entry 8y agoI missed.. Do you mean what 100k tanks, 150K aircrafts and alot other stuff produced in Soviet Union does not help to win the war or you mean SU has weekends too?
- Fins 8y agoMostly that it pales ion comparison with what US Military-Industrial Complex had produced, and that a lot of it would not have been produced in the first place without massive supplies from US (and to lesser degree UK).
- dmnd 8y agoIn Soviet Russia there were perhaps additional goals for this idea (religion, less integrated familial units, divide and conquer). But I wonder if a more enlightened society that doesn't have those additional goals could make this work. Perhaps some of the obvious problems can be addressed, or at least ameliorated: - Shifts could be sharded across families rather than individuals. Individuals seems needlessly granular and disruptive. - The number of shards could be reduced. With 5 shards, 4/5 potential friends don't share your weekend. But maybe we could have only 2 or 3 shards. - A single day (e.g. Sunday) could remain a society-wide day of rest. I think a proposal that included some of the above characteristics along with a shortening of the standard work week (to 35 or 32 hours, perhaps) might be interesting. I suppose we already have a bottom-up version of this with shift work, but probably there is some small benefit to aligning shifts in a top-down way (i.e. it reduces shards which should increase happiness).