voskresnik means A Sunday designated for community volunteer work, such as cleaning the streets, after the October Revolution in Russia. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 85 out of 100.
Why “voskresnik” is a great word
VOSKRESNIK — [Noun] A Sunday designated for mandatory or volunteer communal labor in early Soviet Russia, or a participant in such work. From Russian воскре́сник (voskrésnik), from воскресе́нье (voskresénʹje, "Sunday") + the agentive suffix -ник (-nik). Unlike a subbotnik, which organized labor on a Saturday, or a volunteer, which implies individual choice, a voskresnik embodies the state's systematic annexation of the day of rest. It is the scrape of shovels on frost-hardened earth where church bells once rang, the rhythmic swing of hammers repairing a railway line, and the shared, unsmiling exhaustion of a populace turning the Sabbath into a secular rite—a small, scheduled revolution against time itself.
noun
- A Sunday designated for community volunteer work, such as cleaning the streets, after the October Revolution in Russia.“It is necessary to use such forms of sponsorship help as subbotniki and voskresniki [work without pay donated to the state on weekends], more intensively and rationally.”
- One who took part in this work.“It was young boys and girls in their teens, through their vast organization, the Komsomol, who initiated the movement of the Voskresniki, or voluntary Sunday workers, which was tried out for the first time on Sunday, August 16, 1941.”
- A member of a Russian sect of Sunday observers.“The Molokane split into Subbotniki (Saturday-observers) and Voskresniki (Sunday-observers). […] Within the Voskresniki, a group following Maksim Popov, a peasant of Samara, organized a colony practicing primitive communism, which did not last long.”