I remember how ordinary the question "Where do you work?" sounded in the Soviet Union. Nobody needed to explain why they were asking. A person's job was simply part of how people understood one another.

That may seem strange now, especially in a world where someone can leave a job for several months, live on savings, work on a personal project or simply take a break. In the USSR, a long period without work could attract attention.

The reason was built into the system itself. The state expected every able-bodied citizen to take part in socially useful labor. Work was considered both a right and an obligation.

This is where the word tuneyadets came from. It is usually translated as "parasite" or "loafer", although neither word fully captures the Soviet meaning.

A student wasn't considered a tuneyadets. The same applied to people serving in the army, pensioners, parents raising children and those who couldn't work because of their health. The problem concerned able-bodied people who stayed outside official employment for a long time and couldn't give a convincing explanation for how they supported themselves.

That attitude was closely connected with the way the Soviet economy was organized. Officially, there was no unemployment. Jobs were available, factories and other workplaces needed people, and employment was part of ordinary adult life. So someone who simply decided to stay outside the workforce for years was viewed differently from a person who had temporarily lost a job.

The law wasn't the only source of pressure, either. There was also everyday social life. When people met, work naturally came up in conversation. Your workplace told others something about your routine and your place in society. A person without a job could therefore attract questions from relatives, neighbors and acquaintances long before any official problem appeared.

There were people who tried to live outside this system. Some survived through occasional earnings, while others worked unofficially. For a long time, however, this was difficult to hide and difficult to maintain.

The consequences could become serious in some cases. A person might first be encouraged to find employment or have their circumstances examined. If the situation went further, it could become a legal matter.

The word tuneyadstvo therefore carried a meaning that went beyond employment itself. It described a situation in which a person was considered capable of working but deliberately remained outside the accepted social order.

I find this one of the more unusual things about Soviet everyday life. People could have very different jobs and very different incomes, yet having a job in the first place was something almost everyone was expected to have, and that's probably why asking someone where they worked could sound like such an ordinary question. Behind it was an assumption that was rarely questioned.

For someone who grew up with that idea, living for years without an official job could seem almost impossible to imagine.