RUSSIA: Hardly Worth a Holiday

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To hear the Russians tell it, Soviet workers hate to take a day off to rest and play when they could be spending long hours at the lathe, the desk or the work bench. So, "to meet the wishes of the majority of the workers, bearing in mind the many requests received from trade unions," the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet last week ruled that Jan. 22, official Day of Memory for Lenin, will no longer be a day off. The workers, said the Presidium, had "correctly" taken the position "that the holding of a public holiday . . . is not in keeping" with the revering of Lenin. The ukase raised an interesting question: whether Lenin, who used to share joint billing with Joseph Stalin, is now being shunted farther & farther back into a dark corner of the Soviet Pantheon.