Worker and Kolkhoz Woman
1937 sculpture by Vera Mukhina
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History
The sculpture was originally created to crown the Soviet pavilion of the 1937 World's Fair. The organisers had placed the Soviet and Nazi German pavilions facing each other across the main pedestrian boulevard at the Trocadéro on the north bank of the Seine.
Mukhina was inspired by her study of the classical Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the Winged Victory of Samothrace and La Marseillaise, François Rude's sculptural group for the Arc de Triomphe, to bring a monumental composition of socialist realist confidence to the heart of Paris. The symbolism of the two figures striding from West to East, as determined by the layout of the pavilion, was also not lost on the spectators.
Mukhina said that her sculpture was intended "to continue the idea inherent in the building, and this sculpture was to be an inseparable part of the whole structure", but after the fair, the Rabochiy i Kolkhoznitsa was relocated to Moscow where it was placed just outside the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition.
In 1941, the sculpture earned Mukhina one of the initial batch of Stalin Prizes.
The sculpture was removed for restoration in autumn of 2003 during the city's Expo 2010 bid. The plan was that the sculpture could be back at its place by 2005, but this did not happen after the city lost the bidding process to Shanghai and many financial problems contributed to a delayed re-installation.
At the end of 2009 the monument returned to its place at VDNKh after 6 years of restorations. The revealing of the restored monument was held on the evening of December 4, 2009, accompanied by fireworks and a light show. The restored statue uses a new pavilion as pedestal, increasing its total height from 34.5 metres (the old pedestal was 10 metres tall) to 60 metres (the new pavilion is 34.5 metres tall plus the 24.5 metres of the statue itself).
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Manufacturing and installation
The main structure of the monument was made at The Moscow factory of aggregate machine tools and automatic lines (called "Stankoagregat"), while the smaller components of the outer covering were created at the pilot plant of the Central Research Institute of Mechanical Engineering and Metalworking, overseen by Professor Pyotr Nikolayevich Lvov. He suggested using stainless chrome-nickel steel for the sculpture, despite initial doubts from Vera Mukhina and the rest of the team. The main reason steel was chosen over bronze and copper was because it had a better ability to reflect light. The goal was for the monument to shine brighter than the eagle on the German pavilion and the Eiffel Tower. Lvov invented resistance spot welding, a technique that was used to skin airplanes since the 1930s. Instead of using the traditional riveting method, the decision was made to use this technology for assembling the sculpture.
At the start of the project, the workers had four plaster models to use, with the tallest one being 95 cm. They assembled the monument in the factory courtyard using a crane that was 35 meters high with a 15-meter boom. The templates for the plating parts were made of wood, and the carpenters used 15 cm thick boards. The molded parts were then shaped from inside the monument. People involved in the project remembered these details:
"Working in February was particularly challenging due to the cold weather and strong winds. The only respite from the wind was inside the frame or "under the skirt of the Kolkhoznitsa". To keep warm, we relied on a fire that was built in a cauldron dug into the ground. Additionally, we had to manually weld the sheathing sheets".
A different approach was needed to create the hands and heads of the sculpture. Instead of using wooden templates, clay was used to fill in the damaged wooden blanks for the heads, which were then molded with steel. The creation of the scarf posed challenges, as it was a large and heavy piece that needed to be supported without external help. During the creation of this artwork, factory director S. P. Tambovtsev criticized Mukhina for causing delays with numerous revisions and claimed that the scarf she had designed could potentially damage the sculpture during windy weather. Tambovtsev even stated that Lev Trotsky, who was considered an "enemy of the people", could be seen in certain angles of the frame. However, his complaints were ignored, and engineers B.A. Dzerzhkovich and A.A. Prikhozhan managed to create a truss to support the scarf, allowing it to appear as if it was floating behind two figures.
During this time period, the sculpture was created and it was supported by a heavy frame weighing 63 tons. The outer shells of the sculpture, made from thin sheets of 0.5 mm steel, only weighed 12 tons. The entire process took three and a half months. Once the sculpture was assembled, it was visited by a government commission led by Kliment Voroshilov, the People's Commissar of Defense. Later that evening, Joseph Stalin, the leader of the USSR, inspected the finished monument. Shortly after, the sculpture was dismantled for transportation to Paris.
In culture
In Soviet cinema, the sculpture was chosen in 1947 to serve as the logo for the film studio Mosfilm. It can be seen in the opening credits of Russian films released by the Mosfilm studio, as well as in the opening credits of the American comedy film Red Heat. Mukhina manufactured a gypsum copy of the sculpture for use in Mosfilm's credits, because photos of the original produced distrorted perspective.
A giant moving reproduction of the statue was featured in the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.