Stalin’s new working week
Historian investigates how Stalin changed the
calendar to keep the Soviet people continually at work.
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A
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“There are no
fortresses that Bolsheviks cannot storm”. With these words, Stalin
expressed the dynamic self-confidence of the Soviet Union’s Five Year Plan:
weak and backward Russia was to turn overnight into a powerful modem
industrial country. Between 1928 and 1932,production of
coal, iron and steel increased at a fantastic rate, and new industrial
cities sprang up, along with the world’s biggest dam. Everyone’s life was
affected, as collectivised farming drove millions from the land to swell the
industrial proletariat. Private enterprise disappeared in city and country,
leaving the State supreme under the dictatorship of Stalin. Unlimited
enthusiasm was the mood of the day, with the Communists believing that iron
will and hard-working manpower alone would bring about a new world.
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B
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Enthusiasm
spread to time itself, in the desire to make the state a huge efficient
machine, where not a moment would be wasted, especially in the workplace.
Lenin had already been intrigued by the ideas of the American Frederick
Winslow Taylor (1856-1915), whose time-motion studies had discovered ways
of stream-lining effort so that every worker could produce the maximum. The
Bolsheviks were also great admirers of Henry Ford’s assembly line mass
production and of his Fordson tractors that were imported by the thousands.
The engineers who came with them to train their users helped spread what
became a real cult of Ford. Emulating and surpassing such capitalist models
formed part of the training of the new Soviet Man, a heroic figure whose
unlimited capacity for work would benefit everyone in the dynamic new
society. All this culminated in the Plan, which has been characterized as
the triumph of the machine, where workers would become supremely efficient
robot-like creatures.
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C
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Yet this was
Communism whose goals had always included improving the lives of the
proletariat. One major step in that direction was the sudden announcement
in 1927 that reduced the working day from eight to seven hours. In January
1929, all Indus-tries were ordered to adopt the shorter day by the end of
the Plan. Workers were also to have an extra hour off on the eve of Sundays
and holidays. Typically though, the state took away more than it gave, for
this was part of a scheme to increase production by establishing a
three-shift system. This meant that the factories were open day and night
and that many had to work at highly undesirable hours.
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D
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Hardly had that
policy been announced, though, than Yuri Larin, who had been a close
associate of Lenin and architect of his radical economic policy, came up
with an idea for even greater efficiency. Workers were free and plants were
closed on Sundays. Why not abolish that wasted day by instituting a
continuous work week so that the machines could operate to their full
capacity every day of the week? When Larin presented his idea to the
Congress of Soviets in May 1929, no one paid much attention. Soon after,
though, he got the ear of Stalin, who approved. Suddenly, in June, the
Soviet press was filled with articles praising the new scheme. In August,
the Council of Peoples’ Commissars ordered that the continuous work week be
brought into immediate effect, during the height of enthusiasm for the
Plan, whose goals the new schedule seemed guaranteed to forward.
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E
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The idea
seemed simple enough, but turned out to be very complicated in practice.
Obviously, the workers couldn’t be made to work seven days a week, nor
should their total work hours be increased. The solution was ingenious: a
new five-day week would have the workers on the job for four days, with the
fifth day free; holidays would be reduced from ten to five, and the extra
hour off on the eve of rest days would be abolished. Staggering the rest-days
between groups of workers meant that each worker would spend the same
number of hours on the job, but the factories would be working a full 360
days a year instead of 300. The 360 divided neatly into 72 five-day weeks.
Workers in each establishment (at first factories,then stores
and offices) were divided into five groups, each assigned a colour which
appeared on the new Uninterrupted Work Week calendars distributed all over
the country. Colour-coding was a valuable mnemonic device, since workers
might have trouble remembering what their day off was going to be, for it
would change every week. A glance at the colour on the calendar would
reveal the free day, and allow workers to plan their activities. This
system, however, did not apply to construction or seasonal occupations,
which followed a six-day week, or to factories or mines which had to close
regularly for maintenance: they also had a six-day week, whether
interrupted (with the same day off for everyone) or continuous. In all
cases, though, Sunday was treated like any other day.
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F
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Official propaganda
touted the material and cultural benefits of the new scheme. Workers would
get more rest; production and employment would increase (for more workers
would be needed to keep the factories running continuously); the standard
of living would improve. Leisure time would be more rationally employed,
for cultural activities (theatre, clubs, sports) would no longer have to be
crammed into a weekend, but could flourish every day, with their facilities
far less crowded. Shopping would be easier for the same reasons. Ignorance
and superstition, as represented by organized religion, would suffer a
mortal blow, since 80 per cent of the workers would be on the job on any
given Sunday. The only objection concerned the family, where normally more
than one member was working: well, the Soviets insisted, the narrow family
was far less important than the vast common good and besides, arrangements
could be made for husband and wife to share a common schedule. In fact, the
regime had long wanted to weaken or sideline the two greatest potential
threats to its total dominance: organised religion and the nuclear family.
Religion succumbed, but the family, as even Stalin finally had to admit,
proved much more resistant.
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G
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The
continuous work week, hailed as a Utopia where time itself was conquered
and the sluggish Sunday abolished forever, spread like an epidemic.
According to official figures, 63 per cent of industrial workers were so
employed by April 1930; in June, all industry was ordered to convert during
the next year. The fad reached its peak in October when it affected 73 per
cent of workers. In fact, many managers simply claimed that their factories
had gone over to the new week, without actually applying it. Conforming to
the demands of the Plan was important; practical matters could wait. By
then, though, problems were becoming obvious. Most serious (though never
officially admitted), the workers hated it. Coordination of family
schedules was virtually impossible and usually ignored, so husbands and
wives only saw each other before or after work; rest days were empty
without any loved ones to share them 一 even friends
were likely to be on a different schedule. Confusion reigned: the new plan
was introduced haphazardly, with some factories operating five-, six- and
seven-day weeks at the same time, and the workers often not getting their
rest days at all.
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H
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The Soviet
government might have ignored all that (It didn’t depend on public
approval) ,but the new week was far from having
the vaunted effect on production. With the complicated rotation system, the
work teams necessarily found themselves doing different kinds of work in
successive weeks. Machines, no longer consistently in the hands of people
who knew how to tend them, were often poorly maintained or even broken.
Workers lost a sense of responsibility for the special tasks they had
normally performed.
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I
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As a result,
the new week started to lose ground. Stalin’s speech of June 1931,
which criticised the “depersonalised labor” its too hasty application had
brought, marked the beginning of the end. In November, the government
ordered the widespread adoption of the six-day week, which had its own
calendar, with regular breaks on the 6th, 12th, 18th,24th,
and 30th,with Sunday usually as a working day.
By July 1935, only 26 per cent of workers still followed the continuous
schedule, and the six-day week was soon on its way out. Finally, in 1940,as
part of the general reversion to more traditional methods, both the
continuous five-day week and the novel six-day week were abandoned, and
Sunday returned as the universal day of rest. A bold but typically
ill-conceived experiment was at an end.
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Questions 27-34
Reading Passage 2 has nine paragraphs
A-I.
Choose the correct heading for each
paragraph from the list of headings below. Write the correct number i-xii in
boxes 27-34 on your answer sheet.
List of headings
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i Benefits of the new scheme and
its resistance
ii Making use of the once wasted
weekends
iii Cutting work hours for better
efficiency
iv Optimism of the great future
v Negative effects on production
itself
vi Soviet Union’s five year plan
vii The abolishment of the new
work-week scheme
viii The Ford model
ix Reaction from factory workers
and their families
x The color-coding scheme
xi Establishing a three-shift
system
xii Foreign inspiration
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27
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Paragraph A
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28
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Paragraph B
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29
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Paragraph D
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30
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Paragraph E
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31
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Paragraph F
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32
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Paragraph G
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33
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Paragraph H
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34
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Paragraph I
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Example
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Answer
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Paragraph C
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iii
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Questions
35-37
Choose
the correct letter A, B, C or D.
Write
your answers in boxes for questions 35-37 on your answer sheet.
35
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According to paragraph A, Soviet’s five year plan was a success
because
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A
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Bolsheviks built a strong fortress.
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B
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Russia was
weak and backward.
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C
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industrial production increased.
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D
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Stalin was
confident about Soviet’s potential.
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36
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Daily working hours were cut from eight to seven to
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A
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improve
the lives of all people.
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B
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boost industrial productivity.
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C
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get rid of
undesirable work hours.
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D
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change the already establish three-shift work system.
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37
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Many
factory managers claimed to have complied with the demands of the new work
week because
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A
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they were pressurized by the state to do so.
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B
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they
believed there would not be any practical problems.
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C
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they were able to apply it.
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D
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workers
hated the new plan.
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Questions
38-40
Answer
the questions below using NOT MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each
answer.
Write
your answers in boxes for questions 38-40 on your answer sheet.
38
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Whose idea of continuous work week did Stalin approve and helped to
implement?
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39
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What method was used to help workers to remember the rotation of
their off days?
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40
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What was
the most resistant force to the new work week scheme?
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