Soviet Ambitions: The Five-Day Week and Beyond

The Soviet Union, never one to shy away from radical social experiments, launched its own ambitious assault on traditional time measurement in 1929. Soviet planners, obsessed with industrial efficiency and ideologically opposed to religious traditions, introduced the "nepreryvka"—the uninterrupted week. Instead of the traditional seven-day week with its religious Sabbath, Soviet workers would follow a five-day cycle: four days of work followed by one day of rest.

The logic seemed sound. By staggering rest days among different groups of workers, factories could operate continuously without stopping for weekends. Industrial output would soar. Religious observance would wither away as Sunday lost its special significance. The Soviet Union would leap ahead of capitalist nations through the sheer power of rational time management.

Color-coded calendars appeared throughout the USSR. Workers were assigned to different groups—yellow, red, purple, green, or orange—each with their rest day on a different part of the five-day cycle. Husbands and wives often found themselves assigned to different color groups, making family gatherings nearly impossible. Children couldn't visit grandparents because their schedules never aligned.

The system created social chaos. Families disintegrated under the strain of never having common free time. Workers, exhausted by the intense four-day work periods, became less productive, not more. Equipment broke down more frequently without proper maintenance windows. Even Party officials found themselves unable to coordinate meetings across different time cycles.

By 1931, the Soviets modified the system to a six-day week, hoping to preserve some benefits while reducing social disruption. But even this proved unworkable. In 1940, the USSR quietly returned to the traditional seven-day week, though they maintained Saturday as the primary rest day rather than Sunday, preserving some ideological distance from Christian tradition.

The Soviet time experiment revealed another crucial truth about measurement systems: they don't exist in isolation. Time measurement is intimately connected to social structures, family life, and cultural rhythms. Even totalitarian governments with absolute power couldn't successfully impose time systems that worked against fundamental human social needs.