Soviet reform of the Gregorian calendar was very different from the French reform during the Revolution. While it did not set aside the Gregorian calendar year, the new reform completely restructured the weeks. The official reason was for greater productivity from workers and factories, but like the French reform before it, the Soviet calendar reform was in large part a reaction against religion.
In May of 1929, Yurii M. Larin proposed a continuous production week.1 While at first his proposal was lightly dismissed, by the very next month he had won the support of Joseph Stalin, premier of the Soviet Union. Any opposition to the proposed reform was quickly crushed as "Counterrevolutionary bureaucratic sabotage." 2Two months later on August 26, 1929, the Council of People's Commissars (CPC) decreed that all productive enterprises were to transition from the traditional work week interrupted by a weekend, to a continuous production week. Further, the CPC stated that it was "essential that the systematically prepared transition of undertakings and institutions to continuous production should begin during the economic year 1929-1930."3The idea appeared simple: divide all workers into shifts. This applied not only to factory workers, but to retail and government workers as well. With factories and stores open and producing 24 hours a day, every day of the week, productivity would increase. This was called the nepreryvka or "uninterrupted" week.
The reform was simple in appearance only. The effect on social life was disastrous. Weeks were five days long. Each day was coded with either a Roman numeral, I to V, or a color. These colors soon came to be identified with certain days of the week. Workers were assigned a number or color to indicate their days off.
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