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Back in the USSR those volunteers were told to come on their day off to their offices and do some kind of updaid work that wasn’t connected with their usual duties. They had to wash windows, clean yards, plant trees or flowers. This work was compulsory for everybody in different fields: engineers, teachers, doctors, schoolchildren, students and so on. They were usually held on Saturday (Subbota).
Nowadays subbotniks are held sometimes but they are not compulsory and aren’t connected with the office where a person works. In April or May people clean the yards and plant trees and flowers in their neighborhood.

I wasn't too far off, then. On a much smaller scale, my mother used much the same approach: "Would you like to help with the dishes?" was a question where the expected answer -- the only possible acceptable answer, indeed -- was 'yes'. Drove us nuts as kids.

Can't help tossing in my two cents/pence/copecks. The word "subbotnik" was born in Lenin's times and means "volunteer clean-up". In this meaning the word entered other languages. And in this meaning it was used till the collapse of the USSR.

Serinde wrote:I wasn't too far off, then. On a much smaller scale, my mother used much the same approach: "Would you like to help with the dishes?" was a question where the expected answer -- the only possible acceptable answer, indeed -- was 'yes'. Drove us nuts as kids.

So did mine

Podolyanka wrote:Can't help tossing in my two cents/pence/copecks. The word "subbotnik" was born in Lenin's times and means "volunteer clean-up". In this meaning the word entered other languages. And in this meaning it was used till the collapse of the USSR.

That's right!