![19200501-lenin subbotnik kremlin](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/19200501-lenin_subbotnik_kremlin.jpg)
Subbotnik and voskresnik (from rus, суббо́та, p=sʊˈbotə for "Saturday" and , for "Sunday") were days of
volunteer
Volunteering is a voluntary act of an individual or group freely giving time and labor for community service. Many volunteers are specifically trained in the areas they work, such as medicine, education, or emergency rescue. Others serve ...
unpaid work
Unpaid labor or unpaid work is defined as labor or work that does not receive any direct remuneration. This is a form of non-market work which can fall into one of two categories: (1) unpaid work that is placed within the production boundary of ...
on weekends after the
October Revolution
The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key moment ...
, though the word itself is derived from (''Subbota'' for Saturday) and the common Russian
suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
(-nik).
["Millions in Soviet Donate A Day's Work to Country"]
by Theodore Shabad, ''The New York Times'', April 18, 1971, p1
The tradition is continued in modern
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
and some other
former Soviet Republics
The post-Soviet states, also known as the former Soviet Union (FSU), the former Soviet Republics and in Russia as the near abroad (russian: links=no, ближнее зарубежье, blizhneye zarubezhye), are the 15 sovereign states that wer ...
. Subbotniks are mostly organized for cleaning the streets of garbage, fixing public amenities, collecting recyclable material, and other
community service
Community service is unpaid work performed by a person or group of people for the benefit and betterment of their community without any form of compensation. Community service can be distinct from volunteering, since it is not always performed ...
s.
The first mass subbotnik was held on April 12, 1919, at the Moscow-Sortirovochnaya railway depot of the Moscow-Kazan Railway upon the initiative of local
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
s. It was stated in the ''Resolution of the General Council of Communists of the Subraion of the Moscow-Kazan Railway and Their Adherents'' that "the communists and their supporters again must spur themselves on and extract from their time off still another hour of work, i.e. they must increase their working day by an hour, add it up and on Saturday devote six hours at a stretch to physical labour, thereby producing immediately a real value. Considering that communists should not spare their health and lives for the victory of the revolution, the work is conducted without pay."
[Kaplan (1968) p.359] This subbotnik prompted Lenin to write the article ', where he called subbotniks "the actual beginnings of the communism".
On April 12, 1969, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Subbotnik, the Soviet Union revived the concept and millions of citizens volunteered for extra work at least as late as 1971.
[
The first all-Russian subbotnik was held on May 1, 1920, and ]Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...
participated in removing building rubble in the Moscow Kremlin
The Kremlin ( rus, Московский Кремль, r=Moskovskiy Kreml', p=ˈmɐˈskofskʲɪj krʲemlʲ, t=Moscow Kremlin) is a fortified complex in the center of Moscow founded by the Rurik dynasty. It is the best known of the kremlins (R ...
, an episode portrayed in a famous painting by Vladimir Krikhatsky, ''Lenin at the First Subbotnik'', of Lenin carrying a log.
Subsequently, "communist subbotniks" and "voskresniks" became obligatory political events in the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
, with annual "Lenin's Subbotnik" being held in the vicinity of Lenin's birthday.
Subbotnik was also promoted in the 1950s in the Eastern Bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
countries and in particular in the German Democratic Republic
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
(GDR), as the USSR sought to build up the GDR as the westernmost outpost of socialism
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
in Europe.
In Czechoslovakia
, rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי,
, common_name = Czechoslovakia
, life_span = 1918–19391945–1992
, p1 = Austria-Hungary
, image_p1 ...
, a similar kind of work was known as Action Z (), from Czech word , "improvement", referring to the typical activities from garbage removal to housing construction.
See also
*Civil conscription
Civil conscription is the obligation of civilians to perform mandatory labour for the government. This kind of work has to correspond with the exceptions in international agreements, otherwise it could fall under the category of unfree labour. Th ...
* Working Saturday
References
Bibliography
*
External links
{{Commons category, Subbotnik
Lenin's article about subbotniks
Modern Subbotniks have been performed, on at least one occasion by immigrants from the Former Soviet Union.
__NOTOC__
Volunteering in the Soviet Union
Saturday events