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Happy May Day! Here's a Twitter thread [0] that has excerpts/paraphrases from an old Soviet pamphlet called "How Soviet Workers Spend Their Leisure." (rolled up

Happy May Day! Here's a Twitter thread [0] that has excerpts/paraphrases from an old Soviet pamphlet called "How Soviet Workers Spend Their Leisure." (rolled up version [1]) You can find a scanned version of the pamphlet here [2]. There were many of these pamphlets published. One day I will scan them and post them. There was one on Waterways & Transport in the USSR, one about Soviet theater, one about the food industry in the USSR, one about light industries of the USSR, and one about the countryside of past and present of the USSR. I think these were a series published in 1939. Article 119 of the Soviet Constitution: > ARTICLE 119. Citizens of the U.S.S.R. have the right to rest and leisure. > > The right to rest and leisure is ensured by the reduction of the working day to seven hours for the overwhelming majority of the workers, the institution of annual vacations with full pay for workers and employees and the provision of a wide network of sanatoria, rest homes and clubs for the accommodation of the working people. 'Sanatoria' being health/medical centers or hospitals. [0]: https://twitter.com/REVMAXXING/status/1594499770990608385 https://twitter.com/REVMAXXING/status/1594499770990608385 [1]: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1594499770990608385.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1594499770990608385.html [2]: https://digital.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/items/show/4595#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&xywh=-332%2C-1%2C1064%2C600 https://digital.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/items/show/4595#?c=...

HideousKojima 3y ago
Sounds similar to how the Chinese constitution guarantees the right to freedom of speech.
ahelwer 3y ago
Prolonged periods of time spent without obligation to work for pay is one of the greatest luxuries you can have in this life. People shouldn't have to wait until retirement to enjoy it. Sabbatical, basically, although even sabbatical often comes with obligations for self-improvement serving the company offering it. A lot of discourse on working hours revolves around decreasing the hours worked per week. I would also like to see people talk about a right to take 6-12 months of unstructured leave after 3-4 years of service. Seems unrealistic? What is all this wealth and automation and productivity growth for, then?
- arsome 3y ago
  > What is all this wealth and automation and productivity growth for, then? Why, more wealth and automation and productivity growth to no end of course.
  - explorer83 3y ago
    I know all of these things sound nice. But in the real world a lot of businesses aren't making the kind of profit that allows workers to just take time off and not generate any revenue for the company. Sure there are some that could pull it off. But most small businesses aren't making that kind of profit. Unless you are assuming workers are supposed to take unpaid time off. But then how are they going to afford to take time off?
    - hkt 3y ago
      If your business can't pay its bills without forgoing its legal and moral responsibilities, it has failed.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        If it can't for any reason, it's failed. The problem is the more things you pile on, the harder it gets. The main point of a business, and the main good it does, is not employing people. It's what goods or services it provides its customers, at a lower price. If you moralise and add more things for a business to do, the big ones will do some performative stuff and spend their vast marketing budgets on it, and the small ones will go under, and we all lose because we get less choice and higher prices.
      - explorer83 3y ago
        Not really. It could be a new business that is only a few years old and is still trying to grow and become the type of business can afford these. Or an established business that lost a major client. Your viewpoint is really limited.
    - ivan_gammel 3y ago
uristohkrat 3y ago
[flagged]
- ahelwer 3y ago
  We do have that, it's called the global south under neocolonialism.
  - TheGigaChad 3y ago
    [dead]
- onion2k 3y ago
  In a very literal sense, most countries and especially the USA, do have that pool of labor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_complex#Prison_labor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_comp...
  - HideousKojima 3y ago
    Prison labor != Political prisoner labor
    - benmanns 3y ago
      To some extent, the war on drugs is a war on minorities is a political war on the left.
      - Forbo 3y ago
        The down voting of the parent is wholly unjustified. This is a factual reality that has already taken place and continues on to this day. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
vondur 3y ago
Did the Soviet government actually follow the Constitution of The USSR? I believe it also mentioned freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom of assembly, all of which seemed to be ignored.
- 0xDEF 3y ago
  >Did the Soviet government actually follow the Constitution of The USSR The Soviet Union did allow some internal dissent and freedom of speech from 1985 to 1991. That might have accelerated its downfall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasnost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasnost
  - sidewndr46 3y ago
    I seem to remember a similar thing happening under Mao for a brief period of time, followed by a near total crackdown on anyone who had decided to speak up.
- flowerbreeze 3y ago
  I think more accurate would be to say it allowed freedom from expression, freedom from religion and freedom from assembly. Unless in the service of the communist party of course.
  - lb1lf 3y ago
    A former colleague of mine, born and raised in the USSR, liked to quip that there was only one minor difference in the way freedom of expression was implemented in the USSR and in the West. Both places guaranteed the freedom to express oneself, but only the West guaranteed your freedom also after you'd expressed yourself.
    - lovecg 3y ago
      “In America we have freedoms. I can stand in front of the White House and shout, ‘President Truman is a moron!’” “Big deal, it’s the same here. I can also stand in the middle of the Red Square and shout ‘President Truman is a moron’”.
martythemaniak 3y ago
As always, the gap between reality and propaganda is hilarious. Soviet workers and their colonized subjects spent their leisure time filling in for the massive failures of the state to provide anything resembling their promises. Some excerpts from my childhood: * Family outing to the fields to harvest carrots to pickle for the winter. This would be bartered with other families who went to harvest other veggies, so that your turshia would not be too monotonous. * Going to my friend's apartment to roasting and canning peppers, because no one has to money to buy the factory made stuff. And if you did, you still wouldn't want such poor quality. * Helping my dad unload window frames for firewood. He worked at a window factory and was able to redirect a small truck full of finished wooden frames, which we could break down and burn for heat over the winter. Sure, it would have made more sense to buy actual firewood or coal rather than steal finished industrial output, but you can't afford that on a regular salary. And it would have made even more sense to offer district heating, and the government had such plans, but you'd freeze long before this became a reality. Eventually we did get district heating - about 6 years after communism fell.
- t-3 3y ago
  Not exactly different from my parents experiences growing up in the US, where "summer vacation" was a trip to uncle's farm to detassel corn or pick cotton, hunting to get meat, etc.
  - wing-_-nuts 3y ago
    Yep, all of my vacations growing up were either hunting or fishing trips. While getting out in nature is nice, when you take your kids out on a boat for 10h / day because you haven't caught enough fish it very quickly stops feeling like a vacation and more like work.
- lawrenci 3y ago
  These examples highlight the deficiencies of the Soviet economy, and it's evident that such failures caused considerable suffering among the population. Nevertheless, given more time to engage in activities akin to the first two examples, and separated from the threat of malnourishment, I believe I would experience greater happiness and a stronger connection to both my food and community. Through shared struggle, bartering, and communal work, we can create a sense of connection that is absent from the isolation brought about by specialization, which, although more economically efficient, also contributes to the social problems present in western society.
lp0_on_fire 3y ago
the Soviet citizen also had “freedom of expression” and the right to freedom of speech and to redress the government. That this farce of a “constitution” is being quoted without irony on hacker news astounds me.
andrewmutz 3y ago
I clicked through to the twitter account that posted the tweetthread and it does not seem like the most reliable source of information.
- clnq 3y ago
  The information presented by the quote and JSTOR is accurate, at least insofar as it reveals that a significant number of individuals in USSR went on either tourist tours or sanatoria each year for rejuvenation. In the 90s, state sanatoria maintained their popularity in post-Soviet countries. To this day, travel agencies in some of these nations primarily focus on two types of journeys: relaxation and "learning" holidays. This deeply ingrained cultural practice persists throughout the region. I don't know how many and which groups of people went on annual holidays in the USSR, but I know it wasn't an insignificant number from what I've observed living there as a kid.

HideousKojima 3y ago

Sounds similar to how the Chinese constitution guarantees the right to freedom of speech.

ahelwer 3y ago

Prolonged periods of time spent without obligation to work for pay is one of the greatest luxuries you can have in this life. People shouldn't have to wait until retirement to enjoy it. Sabbatical, basically, although even sabbatical often comes with obligations for self-improvement serving the company offering it. A lot of discourse on working hours revolves around decreasing the hours worked per week. I would also like to see people talk about a right to take 6-12 months of unstructured leave after 3-4 years of service. Seems unrealistic? What is all this wealth and automation and productivity growth for, then?

arsome 3y ago
> What is all this wealth and automation and productivity growth for, then? Why, more wealth and automation and productivity growth to no end of course.
- explorer83 3y ago
  I know all of these things sound nice. But in the real world a lot of businesses aren't making the kind of profit that allows workers to just take time off and not generate any revenue for the company. Sure there are some that could pull it off. But most small businesses aren't making that kind of profit. Unless you are assuming workers are supposed to take unpaid time off. But then how are they going to afford to take time off?
  - hkt 3y ago
    If your business can't pay its bills without forgoing its legal and moral responsibilities, it has failed.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      If it can't for any reason, it's failed. The problem is the more things you pile on, the harder it gets. The main point of a business, and the main good it does, is not employing people. It's what goods or services it provides its customers, at a lower price. If you moralise and add more things for a business to do, the big ones will do some performative stuff and spend their vast marketing budgets on it, and the small ones will go under, and we all lose because we get less choice and higher prices.
    - explorer83 3y ago
      Not really. It could be a new business that is only a few years old and is still trying to grow and become the type of business can afford these. Or an established business that lost a major client. Your viewpoint is really limited.
  - ivan_gammel 3y ago

uristohkrat 3y ago

[flagged]

ahelwer 3y ago
We do have that, it's called the global south under neocolonialism.
- TheGigaChad 3y ago
  [dead]
onion2k 3y ago
In a very literal sense, most countries and especially the USA, do have that pool of labor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_complex#Prison_labor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_comp...
- HideousKojima 3y ago
  Prison labor != Political prisoner labor
  - benmanns 3y ago
    To some extent, the war on drugs is a war on minorities is a political war on the left.
    - Forbo 3y ago
      The down voting of the parent is wholly unjustified. This is a factual reality that has already taken place and continues on to this day. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

vondur 3y ago

Did the Soviet government actually follow the Constitution of The USSR? I believe it also mentioned freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom of assembly, all of which seemed to be ignored.

0xDEF 3y ago
>Did the Soviet government actually follow the Constitution of The USSR The Soviet Union did allow some internal dissent and freedom of speech from 1985 to 1991. That might have accelerated its downfall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasnost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasnost
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  I seem to remember a similar thing happening under Mao for a brief period of time, followed by a near total crackdown on anyone who had decided to speak up.
flowerbreeze 3y ago
I think more accurate would be to say it allowed freedom from expression, freedom from religion and freedom from assembly. Unless in the service of the communist party of course.
- lb1lf 3y ago
  A former colleague of mine, born and raised in the USSR, liked to quip that there was only one minor difference in the way freedom of expression was implemented in the USSR and in the West. Both places guaranteed the freedom to express oneself, but only the West guaranteed your freedom also after you'd expressed yourself.
  - lovecg 3y ago
    “In America we have freedoms. I can stand in front of the White House and shout, ‘President Truman is a moron!’” “Big deal, it’s the same here. I can also stand in the middle of the Red Square and shout ‘President Truman is a moron’”.

martythemaniak 3y ago

As always, the gap between reality and propaganda is hilarious. Soviet workers and their colonized subjects spent their leisure time filling in for the massive failures of the state to provide anything resembling their promises. Some excerpts from my childhood: * Family outing to the fields to harvest carrots to pickle for the winter. This would be bartered with other families who went to harvest other veggies, so that your turshia would not be too monotonous. * Going to my friend's apartment to roasting and canning peppers, because no one has to money to buy the factory made stuff. And if you did, you still wouldn't want such poor quality. * Helping my dad unload window frames for firewood. He worked at a window factory and was able to redirect a small truck full of finished wooden frames, which we could break down and burn for heat over the winter. Sure, it would have made more sense to buy actual firewood or coal rather than steal finished industrial output, but you can't afford that on a regular salary. And it would have made even more sense to offer district heating, and the government had such plans, but you'd freeze long before this became a reality. Eventually we did get district heating - about 6 years after communism fell.

t-3 3y ago
Not exactly different from my parents experiences growing up in the US, where "summer vacation" was a trip to uncle's farm to detassel corn or pick cotton, hunting to get meat, etc.
- wing-_-nuts 3y ago
  Yep, all of my vacations growing up were either hunting or fishing trips. While getting out in nature is nice, when you take your kids out on a boat for 10h / day because you haven't caught enough fish it very quickly stops feeling like a vacation and more like work.
lawrenci 3y ago
These examples highlight the deficiencies of the Soviet economy, and it's evident that such failures caused considerable suffering among the population. Nevertheless, given more time to engage in activities akin to the first two examples, and separated from the threat of malnourishment, I believe I would experience greater happiness and a stronger connection to both my food and community. Through shared struggle, bartering, and communal work, we can create a sense of connection that is absent from the isolation brought about by specialization, which, although more economically efficient, also contributes to the social problems present in western society.

lp0_on_fire 3y ago

the Soviet citizen also had “freedom of expression” and the right to freedom of speech and to redress the government. That this farce of a “constitution” is being quoted without irony on hacker news astounds me.

andrewmutz 3y ago

I clicked through to the twitter account that posted the tweetthread and it does not seem like the most reliable source of information.

clnq 3y ago
The information presented by the quote and JSTOR is accurate, at least insofar as it reveals that a significant number of individuals in USSR went on either tourist tours or sanatoria each year for rejuvenation. In the 90s, state sanatoria maintained their popularity in post-Soviet countries. To this day, travel agencies in some of these nations primarily focus on two types of journeys: relaxation and "learning" holidays. This deeply ingrained cultural practice persists throughout the region. I don't know how many and which groups of people went on annual holidays in the USSR, but I know it wasn't an insignificant number from what I've observed living there as a kid.