Subbotnik and voskresnik (from rus, суббо́та, p=sʊˈbotə for "Saturday" and , for "Sunday") were days of volunteer

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, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

, 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 and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

(-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 country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

and some other former Soviet Republics. 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 contributing to a noble cause. In many cases, people doing community service are compensated in other ways, such as gettin ...

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, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

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 ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

participated in removing building rubble in the

Moscow Kremlin The Moscow Kremlin (also the Kremlin) is a fortified complex in Moscow, Russia. Located in the centre of the country's capital city, the Moscow Kremlin comprises five palaces, four cathedrals, and the enclosing Kremlin Wall along with the K ...

, 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 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, 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 (Combloc), the Socialist Bloc, the Workers Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was an unofficial coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were a ...

countries and in particular in the

German Democratic Republic East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...

(GDR), as the USSR sought to build up the GDR as the westernmost outpost of

socialism Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

in Europe. In

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

, 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.

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External links

{{Commons category, Subbotnik
Lenin's article about subbotniksModern Subbotniks have been performed, on at least one occasion by immigrants from the Former Soviet Union.
__NOTOC__ Volunteering in the Soviet Union Saturday events

See also

References

Bibliography

External links