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Video: How Stalin consistently shortened the working day
2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55
If you listen to the current propagandists, it turns out that under Soviet rule people were squeezed out at work to the very extreme. They worked hard, they say, in three shifts, the salary was not paid, and in general everything was for ticks of workdays. Whether it is the blessed citadel of democracy! There is freedom for the working man.
As always, real historical documents paint a slightly different picture. Let us cite as an example the speech of Comrade Stalin of February 1929 published in the newspaper.
Then the leader congratulated the collective of the famous plant "Red Triangle" in Leningrad on the anniversary.
Stalin spoke about similar production facilities abroad. There the workers worked hard for fourteen hours. But the Soviet factory is at the forefront of the working class!
Therefore, from 1929, a seven-hour working day was introduced at the plant!And not in order to save on workers' wages, as they do now, but because the Bolsheviks saw this way of improving the lives of workers.
How they worked under the king
In tsarist times, the working day was not limited in any way. Everything was left at the mercy of the owner, the manufacturer.
It is clear that he did not spare anyone for personal gain. At many enterprises, they worked on 14-16 hours … Often they lived at the workshops, since with such work there was no time left for life.
For the first time, the tsar somehow limited the working day only in 1897. And not on their own.
At first, a series of factory strikes thundered throughout the Russian Empire. And the workers' demonstrations dispersed by the Cossacks.
However, Nicholas II was not very generous. The decree established a working day for manufactures and factories in eleven and a half hours.
Then the tsar graciously granted his subjects a week or six days. Sundays were declared a day off for Orthodox Christians.
What the Bolsheviks gave to the workers
On the fourth day after the Great October Socialist Revolution, the Council of People's Commissars issued a decree on an eight-hour working day! For harmful and difficult industries, an even shorter working day was established.
From the beginning of 1929 to October 1933, the Council of People's Commissars established a gradual transition of Soviet industry to a seven-hour working day!
In August 1929, the working week was additionally shortened. Now the country has been transferred to five days: four days of work, one day off.
This system yielded a month over the traditional six-day workweek. additional two days off for workers!
Only on the eve of the war did they have to return to the "reactionary" eight working hours. The Supreme Soviet adopted such a resolution in June 1940.
Post-war recovery
The Victory was followed by a difficult period of restoration of the national economy destroyed by the Nazis. They had to work with all their might, rebuild cities and bombed-out factories.
But by the mid-fifties, the working day was again reduced to the pre-war seven hours. The reduction did not take place immediately, it was carried out in a planned manner in individual industries.
Under Stalin, Soviet scientists spoke of the inevitability and further reduction of working hours. Labor productivity in industry and agriculture grew at a rapid pace.
According to scientists, by the end of the 20th century, only a four-hour working day would have been enough to maintain the achieved standard of living with a rational organization of work
Even in capitalist countries like France or Norway, the seven-hour working day has already been introduced. The widespread adoption of industrial robots frees up workers even more.
But if under socialism such an increase in productivity resulted in lower prices and a cut in working hours, then under capitalism this is not the case. There it only threatens unemployment, hungry workers and even more tightening of the screws.
Actually, we see the same thing in our native country. Unpaid overtime is thriving on a massive scale, retirement dates are being pushed back, and no one even stutters about shortening the working day.
This is in fact, but in words - where were the workers squeezed out to the last possible extent? That's right, with the hated socialists. And try to argue.
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