page_title: Soviet calendar
section_title: Five-day weeks
hierarchical_section_title: Soviet calendar / Five-day weeks
caption_attribution_description: English: Soviet calendar for 1930 showing Gregorian months, traditional seven-day week, five national holidays, plus colored five-day work week.
context_page_description: The Soviet calendar refers to the Gregorian calendar implemented in 1918, national holidays, and five- and six-day work weeks used between 1929 and 1940. The Gregorian calendar, under the name "Western European calendar", was implemented in Soviet Russia in February 1918 by dropping the Julian dates of 1–13 February 1918. As many as nine national holidays were implemented in the following decade, but four were eliminated or merged on 24 September 1929, leaving only five national holidays, 22 January, 1–2 May, and 7–8 November, to celebrate until 1951, when 22 January reverted to a normal day. During 1929 to 1940, five- and six-day work weeks were used to schedule work, but the Gregorian calendar and its seven-day week were used for all other purposes.
  During the summer of 1929, five-day continuous work weeks were implemented in factories, government offices, and commercial enterprises, but not collective farms. One of the five days was randomly assigned to a worker as their day of rest without regard to the rest days assigned to members of their family or friends. These five-day work weeks continued throughout the Gregorian year, interrupted only by the five national holidays.
context_section_description: Each day of the five-day week was labeled by either one of five colors or a Roman numeral from I to V. Each worker was assigned a color or number to identify his or her day of rest.
  Eighty per cent of each factory's workforce was at work every day (except holidays) in an attempt to increase production while 20% were resting. But if a husband and wife, and their relatives and friends, were assigned different colors or numbers, they would not have a common rest day for their family and social life. Furthermore, machines broke down more frequently both because they were used by workers not familiar with them, and because no maintenance could be performed on machines that were never idle in factories with continuous schedules (24 hours/day every day). Five-day weeks (and later six-day weeks) "made it impossible to observe Sunday as a day of rest. This measure was deliberately introduced 'to facilitate the struggle to eliminate religion'".
  The colors vary depending on the source consulted. The 1930 color calendar displayed here has days of purple, blue, yellow, red, and green, in that order beginning 1 January. Blue was supported by an anonymous writer in 1936 as the second day of the week, but he stated that red was the first day of the week. However, most sources replace blue with either pink, orange, or peach, all of which specify the different order yellow, pink/orange/peach, red, purple, and green.
caption: Soviet calendar, 1930 
   Colored five-day work week. Days grouped into seven-day weeks. One national holiday in black, four with white numbers
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