G. A .

P R U D E N S K I O

The Concept of Leisure

in the USSR
IN THE SOCULIST

an increase in the amount of free

time is always a direct consequence of the increasing effectiveness of social
labor. Marx indicated that the saving of labor time is equivalent to an increase in free time. With the increase in free time under socialism each worker
receives an ever-growing opportunity to engage in the improvement of his
own skills, enlargement of knowledge, active participation in organizations,
better organization of rest, etc. All this is necessary for the all-around development of the people. In addition, free time, being one of the conditions of
development of human personality, is a powerful factor for raising the productivity of labor.
Work and free time are interrelated concepts and mutually determining.
Therefore it is necessary to consider not only labor time but nonlabor time
(including the workers free time) in all economic and social matters. The
study and rational utilization of free time at the current stage of development of Soviet society is an important job for the state. The study of nonlabor
time also promotes more correct determination of proportions in production
and consumption.
The increase in workers free time, based on the steady increase of labor
productivity and reduction in labor time, presents one of the most important
laws of socialism, showing up in ever greater degree as socialist society
develops.
The Soviet Union recently completed the transition to a seven- or six-hour
workday (depending on circumstances) and to a shorter workweek. The new
SOCIETY

*Rofeasor G. A. Prudenski, one of the leading Soviet economists, is Director of the

W t u t Ekonomiki i Organizatsii Promishlennovo Proimodstva at Novosibirsk. We invited Professor Prudenskl to contribute an article to a symposium on Work and Leisure in Modem Society,
which appeared in the February 1962 number of this journal. Unfortunately his manuscript did
not arrive until that issue had been printed. Space does not permit us to c
the full manuscn
in the preaent issue, but we felt that a partial exposition of Professor s e n s k i s paper wo&
be of interest to our readers. In view of announced lans to reduce workin hours in the Soviet
Union during the next decade, we are including &e following excerpt 8ealing with uses of
free time or leisure. We are glad to acknowledge the assistance of MI. Alan Abouchar in translating Professor Prudenskis manuscript into English.-Arthur M.Ross,Chairman, Board of Editors.

97

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G. A . PRUDENSKI

Communist Party program provides for further steps in this direction. In the
next ten years the transition will be made to a six-hour workday with one day
off or to a seven-hour workday with two days off. Underground work and
work in arduous conditions will be reduced to a 30-hour week of five six-hour
days or six five-hour days.
It is intended in the following decade to make a transition to an even
shorter workweek on the basis of the appropriate increase in labor productivity. Our country will have the shortest, most productive, and highest-paid
workday in the world.
At the same time, the duration of annual paid workers vacations is increasing. The minimal duration of the vacation of every worker and employee
will increase to three weeks, and, in the future, to one month. The duration
of maternity leave will also increase.
Greatly improved living conditions and cultural advances for the Soviet
people occur every year, since the citizen, his work, and his life are prized
above all.

The Significance of Time

Naturally, time, which measures the various functions of mans
labor and life, is acquiring an ever-greater sigdicance in the way that we
look at things and in our development. The steady increase and rational utilization of the workers free time represent a great task for communism. Tlie
solution of this important task, which accompanies the reduction in working
hours, has already become an urgent problem.
It would be incorrect to consider that the creativity of man finds expression only in his free time. Also filled with creativity is the work time of the
Soviet citizen who builds plants, creates magnificent machines and earth
satellites, tills the field, and skillfully subjugates nature.
The increase in free time signifies an expansion of the sphere of mans
creative potential, which is natural with an increase in time for improving
skills, engaging in sports, art, etc. Here it should be kept in mind that nonlabor and free time are not identical concepts. Free time is that part of nonlabor time which includes study, public and social activities, rest, sports,
hobbies, etc., i.e., that time which the workers use for their own all-round
development.
In the work of some western sociologists nonlabor time and free time are
considered as identical. A few also include in free time that time during
which a person does not work because of unemployment and sickness-the
longer the workers unemployment, the greater his free time. But such free
time is the scourge of the working man. It is patently obvious that enforced

Leisure in the USSR / 99

unemployment and time connected with sickness do not actually represent
free time. For this reason, it is incorrect to identify nonlabor time with free
time; the latter is only a part of the former.
The first budgets of workers time in the USSR were worked out in the
twenties and were considered in the works of Academician S. G. Strumilin.
A number of such budgets appeared subsequently. In recent years this sort
of budget investigation has been conducted in Siberia, Moscow, and other
regions of the USSR. They aim mainly at specifying the methods of study
both of nonlabor time as a whole and of its components-free time, nonlabor
time involved in getting to and from work, etc. However, the results are of
great interest. These data testify to the substantial changes in the structure
of nonlabor time as a result of great social transformations achieved in the
USSR during the years of Soviet rule.
The content of free time has changed substantially. There have appeared
new and substantial developments in self-education and improvement of the
cultural level, in reading newspapers, magazines, and artistic literature, in
movie and theater attendance, television viewing, physical culture and sports,
education of children, hobbies, etc.
An analysis of the free time of the foremost people in industry is indicative of current conditions. In Siberia a study of time budgets was conducted
for 30 brigades of communist labor. It appeared that the members of these
brigades spent much more time than other workers on study (four to five
times as much) and on reading magazines and artistic literature (twice as
much).
In comparing current workers time budgets with earlier ones, it was
found that differences in the basic expenditures of free time of women and
men have narrowed.

The Need to Study Leisure

While the current steps to shorten the workday and the workweek are being taken, there has also been a creation of extensive possibilities
for increasing the cultural and material level of the workers. All this presents
to Soviet economists and sociologists an important need for a thorough study
of free time in the period of unfolding construction of the communist society.
For the thorough study of a given problem it is necessary to work out a
number of methodological problems, especially in the structure of nonlabor
time. In our opinion, nonlabor time can be divided into the following four
basic parts:
1. Time for housework and p e r s m l cure, including that performed with
the services of communal-household establishments and enterprises (pur-

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C.

A. PRUDENSKI

chase and preparation of food, child and personal care, furniture and house
maintenance, clothing maintenance, etc. ).
2. Time for eating and sleeping.
3. Time connected with getting to work, but not included in work time
(getting to work and back, various activities at the enterprise before and after
work-washing, changing clothes, etc. ).
4. Free time spent in study and improving skills, self-teaching, teaching
children, activities of various societies, and rest.
The increase in free time is a complex problem requiring considerable
effort on the part of the socialist state and its local organs, public and social
organizations, and all the workers. And if many groups of workers now have
about three or four hours of free time every working day, we may expect in
the near future that, as a result of the measures being taken by the Soviet
government to improve labor organization, increase its productivity, and,
thereby, reduce the amount of labor time, free time will reach eight or nine
hours a day.
The extensive analysis of workers time budgets that we have conducted
indicates that the shortening of the workday is not the only source for increasing free time. Rational utilization of all nonlabor time acquires great
significance. This reserve for increasing free time includes nonlabor time
spent in getting to work and household chores.
It is most characteristic that the study of nonlabor time not only has become a subject of research for individual economists but has turned into an
object of study for the workers themselves. For example, in the Kuznetsk
Basin, groups of workers in a number of mines have started to study the
method of self-photography of nonlabor time expenditures connected with
production and have made their own suggestions for optimal utilization.
This has permitted planning and successful realization of measures for reducing individual kinds of irrational nonlabor time use.
The study of nonlabor time and free time is connected not only with the
problem of labor productivity but also with a whole series of important social
problems-raising the technical efficiency of the workers, communist education, etc., which now are studied in various areas of the social sciences.
The old bourgeois proverb, time is money, is foreign to the socialist
society. However, the price of time in our country is exceptionally high, since
in the economizing of time lie the conditions for a colossal increase in the
productive forces of our country and the material and spiritual culture of the
Soviet citizen in his advance towards communism.