"I am an old blast furnaceman. For forty years I have been working in the big iron and steel works in the city of Makeyevka, in the center of the Donetz Basin. In eighteen years prior to the Revolution! I never once had a real rest. We worked twelve hours a day, every day of the week. On Saturdays we would come to the works in the evening and leave on Sunday, after eighteen hours continuous work. We toiled like slaves-and not a single day of rest in eighteen years! Thousands upon thousands of workers like myself would come home after a day of hard and wasting labor, dead tired and worn out, too exhausted to do more than throw ourselves down on our beds.
I lived with my family-five of us-in one small stuffy room. There was no space to turnaround. One could hardly breathe on account of the heat, bad air and the smell of cooking. It was particularly bad in summer. After the scorching heat at the blast furnace one could find no relief at home, and there was no place where one could take a shower or a swim. One could not cool off in the shade of a tree,because there were practically none. The only garden in the city belonged to the director of the works and was always guarded by two policemen.
We workers were strictly forbidden to trespass in the garden. The only way to escape the heat was to go to sleep in some cellar.Even if a man had had a chance to rest up and get over his fatigue enough to want some rational recreation or fun,there was nowhere to go. There was no club, theater, moving picture house, or circus in Makeyevka; not even a public garden where one might take a walk, listen to music or dance.
It goes without saying that a worker could not even dream of a real vacation of a trip to the country, to a health resort,rest home or sanatorium. Such things existed only for our bosses, not for workingmen."
- I. G. Korobov
The October Socialist Revolution has brought about a complete change in the life of the working people. From the very outset the Soviet Government introduced the eight-hour day. A law was passed providing for vacations with pay for all workers and office employees. A four to six-hour day, without a reduction in wages, was introduced in industries that are injurious to health. The successful economic development of the Soviet Union and the increasing improvement in the well-being of the working people enabled the Soviet Government to reduce the working day still further.