After the Subbotnik comes the Vosekresnik

One of those little echoes from the gloried Soviet years:

The French senate this week passed a law that will force everyone to work for one extra day a year, with everything they earn going directly to the government. With its vast bureaucracy and a tax system that already squeezes 45pc of GDP out of the economy – and yet still can’t come close to balancing the books – France is on what the economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek would have described as the “road to serfdom”. It is a terrible warning of the fate that will befall all of us if we don’t change direction very soon.

Ah, yes, that echo:

Subbotnik and voskresnik (from Russian: суббо́та, IPA: [sʊˈbotə] for "Saturday" and воскресе́нье, IPA: [vəskrʲɪˈsʲenʲjɪ] for "Sunday") were days of volunteer unpaid work on weekends after the October Revolution,

Once the authorities, the bureaucracy, find that they can force you to work for a day and then take everything resulting from your one day of work then the demands will not stop with just the one day.

And, you know, are we entirely certain that going down that Soviet path is quite what we want for our free and liberal society? Forced, unpaid, labour?

Tim Worstall