It was in May of 1929, at the fifth Congress of the Soviets of the Union, that it was proposed to alter the existing work-week in order to utilize expensive machinery in the factories more effectively and so raise productivity. The proposer, Larin, managed to interest Stalin in the project and on 26 August of the same year, the Council of People's Commissaries announced that the old work-week would be abolished and be replaced by a continuous production week known as 'nepreryvka'. A decree of 24 September modified the proposal by replacing the seven­day cycle with a five ­day one. The workers were issued with coloured slips of paper to tell them which day to take off: yellow, orange, red, purple, and green. They were to observe a day off on the day that fell on their colour.

While it did increase productivity as intended (80 per cent of the country was working at any given time), it disrupted social system by segregating families and friends, workers were demoralized, and machines could not be routinely maintained. However, there were two main disadvantages to nepreryvka. First, it had a profound, disruptive, and unwelcome effect on family and social life; members of the same family, friends, or marriage partners, who had been given different colours. Although the Soviet workers got more time off than then Western counterparts they were rarely able to spend time together.

• Image 1: Calendar for 1929–1930 showing rest days for each of the five worker groups, designated here by different colors. In this version of nepreryvka, the continuous workweek, workers had every fifth day off.
• Image 2: Left- The month of April from a 1931 worker’s pocket calendar. Here, the five different work groups are represented by five symbols—a sheaf of wheat, a red star, the hammer and sickle, a book, and a budenovka, or wool military cap. Courtesy Erast Butakov. Right- The month of July from the same 1931 worker’s pocket calendar. Here, the five different work groups are represented by five symbols—a sheaf of wheat, a red star, the hammer and sickle, a book, and a budenovka, or wool military cap. Courtesy Erast Butakov.
• Image 3: Calendar for 1929–1930 showing rest days for each of the five worker groups, designated here by different colors. In this version of nepreryvka, the continuous workweek, workers had every fifth day off.
• Courtesy of Tony Wood