You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 28-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.
Changes to the Soviet Union's Working Week
27 The Soviet Union's first Five Year Plan was intended to turn the weak and undeveloped country into a powerful, modern, industrial nation. Following its introduction in 1928, production of coal, iron and steel increased at a fantastic rate, and new industrial cities sprang up. Everyone's life was affected, as collectivised farming drove millions from the land to swell the industrial proletariat. Private enterprise disappeared in city and country, leaving the state supreme under the leadership of Stalin. Unlimited enthusiasm was the mood of the day, with the Communists believing that iron will and hard-working manpower alone would bring about a new world.
28 Not even time itself was immune to efforts to make the state a huge, efficient machine, where not a moment would be wasted, especially in the workplace. Stalin's predecessor Lenin had already been intrigued by the ideas of Taylor, the American management expert whose time and motion studies had discovered ways of streamlining effort so that every worker could produce the maximum. The Communists were also great admirers of Ford's assembly line mass production and of his tractors that were imported in their thousands. Emulating and surpassing such capitalist models formed part of the training of the new Soviet Man.
29 The goals of Communism had always included improving the lives of the proletariat. One major step in that direction was the announcement in 1927 that reduced the working day from eight to seven hours. In January 1929, all industries were ordered to adopt the shorter day by the end of the Plan. However, the state took away more than it gave, for this was part of a scheme to increase production by establishing a three-shift system, for six days a week. That meant that the factories were open day and night, and many people had to work at highly undesirable hours.
30 Hardly had that policy been announced, though, than the economist Larin came up with an idea for even greater efficiency. Workers were free and plants were closed on Sundays. Why not abolish that wasted day by instituting a continuous working week so that the machines could operate to their full capacity every day of the week? Stalin approved, and the continuous working week was introduced in August 1929 with immediate effect. This was during the height of enthusiasm for the Plan, whose goals the new schedule seemed guaranteed to forward.
31 The idea turned out to be very complicated in practice. Obviously, the workers couldn't be made to work seven days a week, nor should their total work hours be increased. The solution was ingenious: a new five-day week would have the workers on the job for four days, with the fifth day free. Staggering the rest days between groups of workers meant that each worker would spend the same number of hours on the job, but the factories would be working a full 360 days a year instead of 300. Workers in each establishment were divided into five groups, each assigned a colour which appeared on the new calendars distributed all over the country. This colour-coding was a valuable device, since without it workers might have trouble remembering what their day off was going to be, as it would change every week.
32 Official propaganda stressed the material and cultural benefits of the new scheme. Workers would get more rest; production and employment would increase; the standard of living would improve. Shopping and leisure activities would no longer have to be crammed into a weekend, so facilities would be far less crowded. The only objection concerned the family, where normally more than one member was working: the government insisted that the narrow family was far less important than the vast common good and, besides, arrangements could be made for husband and wife to share a common schedule.
33 The continuous working week spread fast, reaching its peak in October 1930, when it affected nearly three quarters of workers. In fact, many managers simply claimed that their factories had gone over to the new week, without actually applying it. By then, though, problems were becoming obvious. The workers hated it. Coordination of family schedules was virtually impossible, so husbands and wives only saw each other before or after work. Confusion reigned: the new plan was implemented haphazardly, with some factories operating five-, six- and seven-day weeks at the same time, and the workers often not getting their rest days at all.
34 Furthermore, the new week was far from having the vaunted effect on production. With the complicated rotation system, the work teams found themselves doing different kinds of work in successive weeks. Machines, no longer consistently in the hands of people who knew how to tend them, were often poorly maintained. Workers lost a sense of responsibility for the tasks they had normally performed. As a result, the new week started to lose ground.
35 In November 1931, the government ordered the widespread adoption of a new six-day week, including one day off, which had its own calendar. By July 1935, only a quarter of workers still followed the continuous schedule, and the six-day week too was soon on its way out. Both were finally abandoned in 1940, as part of the general reversion to more traditional methods, and Sunday returned as the universal day of rest. The experiment had failed.