Soviet revolution calendar

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Soviet revolutionary calendar for 1930. The calendar is divided into the traditional seven-day week and shows the Gregorian months, the five-day working weeks plus the five public holidays are also colored.

The Soviet revolutionary calendar was in use in the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1940 . However, it is not to be viewed as an independent calendar; rather, the Gregorian calendar was retained, but a five- or six-day working week was added.

prehistory

On Lenin's resolution in 1918, the Soviet Union switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, with a jump of 13 days; January 31 was followed by February 14. This calendar was valid until September 30, 1929.

history

From October 1, 1929, the first version of the Soviet revolution calendar was introduced due to a government decree of September 24, 1929. As an anti-religious measure, it was supposed to overlay the seven-day week with an interrupted five-day work week with 12 months of 30 days each and 5 “non-annual” non-working days and thus abolish the Christian Sunday as a day of rest . The length of the years and months has been retained.

Year structure of the revolution calendar from 1929
week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6
Day 01 02 03 04th 05 01 02 03 04th 05 01 02 03 04th 05 01 02 03 04th 05 01 02 03 04th 05 01 02 03 04th 05
01 02 03 04th 05 06th 07th 08th 09 10 11 12 13 14th 15th 16 17th 18th 19th 20th 21st 22nd 23 24 25th 26th 27 28 29 30th

By eliminating the regular interruption of non-working days, the efficiency of industrial production should be increased. Therefore, all working people were divided into five groups, which were differentiated by color, and each group was given one of the new working days as a day of rest. 80% of the workforce in a company were now employed in production every day, while 20% had their day off. The traditional seven-day week lost its meaning.

The following general commemorative or public holidays are not counted as working days:

The division into groups made the new regulation problematic in two respects: on the one hand because it disrupted family and social life, on the other hand because the alternating absence of one fifth of the employees impaired operational processes. As a result, the expected increase in production did not occur.

On December 1, 1931, Stalin reformed the Soviet revolutionary calendar . A system was introduced that allows for a six-day working week (the Russian name “Schestidnewka” could be translated as “day six”, analogous to “decade”) with a common day of rest for all working people on the 6th, 12th The 18th, 24th and 30th of each month (as well as March 1st); the above-mentioned public holidays were added.

In 1940 the revolutionary calendar was finally abolished and the traditional seven-day week reintroduced. This was the complete restoration of the Gregorian calendar. The reasons given are that the tradition of Sunday as a day of rest in the population could not be suppressed and that working people often stayed away from work on both the official day of rest and on Sunday. So the old weekday names became meaningful again.

See also

literature

  • Clive Foss: Stalin's topsy-turvy work week. In: History Today . Vol. 54, H. 9, September 2004, ISSN  0018-2753 , pp. 46-47.
  • Bonnie Blackburn, Leofranc Holford-Strevens: The Oxford Companion to the Year. Oxford University Press, New York NY et al. 1999, ISBN 0-19-214231-3 , pp. 688 f.
  • RW Davies: The Soviet economy in turmoil. 1929-1930. Macmillan, Basingstoke 1989, ISBN 0-333-31102-7 , pp. 84-86, 143-144, 252-256, 469, 544 ( The industrialization of Soviet Russia 3).
  • Adolf Weniaminowitsch Butkewitsch , Moisei Samoilowitsch Selikson: Perpetual Calendar. ( Small natural science library 23), BG Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft, Leipzig 1989, ISBN 3-322-00393-0
  • The Riga correspondent of the London Times: Russian experiments . In: Journal of Calendar Reform H. 6, 1936, ZDB -ID 344873-3 , pp. 69-71.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The historical date: September 24th. In: annalen.net. September 24, 2004, archived from the original on August 21, 2008 ; accessed on September 24, 2019 .