# Ten day week in Russia?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-day-week-in-russia/205334>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 3, 2003, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-day-week-in-russia/205334 "2003-10-03T14:09:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc348/32.png) [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Flying_Dutchman)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2003, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-day-week-in-russia/205334/1 "2003-10-03T14:09:49Z")

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Back in the late fifties, when the need to observe the Lord’s day was being drilled into me as a young child, it was reported to me that the godless communists had experimented with applying a ten day week to their society in order to raise productivity amonst the workers. Apparently this utterly failed.

In forty years, I’ve never heard any reference to this .

Was this bullshit?

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**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2003, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-day-week-in-russia/205334/2 "2003-10-03T14:20:09Z")

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After the French Revolution, there was a dim movement to go with ten day weeks. That got nowhere.

The Soviet Union experimented with both 5- and 6-day weeks in the late 1920s-early 1930s, but that was scrapped for the seven-day week.

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**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2003, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ten-day-week-in-russia/205334/3 "2003-10-03T15:30:11Z")

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Not entirely nowhere; the calendar was instituted in 1793 and lasted until 1806 when it was replaced with the regular Julian/Gregorian calendar by Napoleon. I believe it was also used briefly by the Paris Commune; the 18th Brumaire was the date on which the Commune was crushed, hence the title of Marx’ “The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”.

Here’s a nifty little [site](http://windhorst.org/calendar/) that gives you today’s date in the Revolutionary Calendar. I got a small issue with it, but it’s nitpicking, really.