Subbotnik

In any society there are the mavericks and you will find them among the Soviet students too—just as you will find the committed Komsomol activists, who take the attendance register, organise the subbotniki (the cleaning-up of the hostels and yards), run the student council, organise political meetings and write references for job applicants).^([sic])

Ivanova, a Moscow municipal engineer, joined thousands of other Muscovites who volunteered a few hours to help tidy this littered, muddy capital. They were seeking to revive, in a new guise, the communist tradition of subbotniki – donating one's labor to the state on the Saturday after Vladimir Lenin's birthday.

To clean up areas near the sporting sites, Mayor Anatol Sobchak even revived the communist practice of subbotniki, or ostensible “voluntary” work on Saturdays.

Though the individual was the initiator, his or her success enlisted others in group movements, such as the Subbotniks, who in 1919 gave every Saturday (Subbota) without pay to work on the railroads, repairing cars and engines and loading freight; […]

Despite the element of coercion and a week of haranguing in the press, most subbotniki appeared to be taking their duties with good humor.

Communist subbotniki (Communist Volunteer Saturday Workers) were shockworkers who volunteered their free Saturdays for the Bolshevik cause. Subbotniki were lauded as heroes of socialist labor, as prototypes of the new unselfish man, and role models for the working class.

The Molokane split into Subbotniki (Saturday-observers) and Voskresniki (Sunday-observers). Although the former were by far the less numerous wing, they themselves produced several subgroups. Many Subbotniki thought of themselves as the “New Israel” and rejected the notion that Jesus was God in any sense; but they also rejected the Talmud and the notion that a Messiah was to be expected who would be a king as well as prophet. In contrast, the Subbotniki of the Caucasus were closer to Judaism; they accepted the Talmud, expected a Messiah-king, and used Jewish prayers in Russian translation.

The Subbotniki (Sabbatarians), for example, adhere to many Jewish observances and accept Jesus only as a prophet. In this, they differ from the predominant Voskresniki (Sunday observers).