Abstract
The stereotypical view of the Soviet Union is that it is a society at work— in the workers’ state people labour and there is no play. From a distance the view is of a people who live grey lives in a ponderous, unrelentingly morose world with no time for laughter or real respite. When not working they hunt for food, and when not hunting for food they are beseiged with boring lectures and newspaper exhortations on the glories of fulfilling the current five year plan. Life is endless tedium. While there is more than a grain of truth in this picture, the portrait is more caricature than photographic realism. There is leisure in the workers’ state; not yet the workers’ paradise but time for play nevertheless.
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Endnotes
The Soviets use the terms ‘iskliuchitel’nost’ i chrezvychainost’’ See L.A. Muksinova, Problemy Regulirovaniia Rabochego Vremenii v SSSR (Moscow, 1969) p. 198.
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© 1984 William Moskoff
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Moskoff, W. (1984). Leisure. In: Labour and Leisure in the Soviet Union. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06946-0_5
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