Monument "Worker and Collective Farm Girl"

Along with "Liberator Warrior" and "Monument to the Unknown Soldier", "Worker and Collective Farm Woman" is one of the most outstanding monuments of the X century.

This sculpture was specially assembled for the Paris exhibition held in May 1937. She was supposed to personify the exploits of the working people and the achievements of the socialist economy.

The authors of the sculpture and what served as the basis for its creation

Author of architectural composition – Iofan Boris Mikhailovich. According to his idea, the monument should be located close to the pavilion of Germany and on a larger territory of religious ideology compared to the bourgeois dictatorship.  The size of the statue, together with the pedestal, reached a height of 60 meters.

The inspiration for this pedestal, Boris Mikhailovich, was the sculpture "Tyrant-Fighters", the idea and commitment of which was taken as the basis: instead of swords, hammers and a sickle flaunted in the hands of workers and collective farmers, respectively.

Tender for the plastic creation of a monument to the honored Mukhina Vera, who became the main character of the personification of the entire sculpture.

The bust of the main leader of the architectural composition was returned to the physique of the legendary ballet dancer Igor Basanko. The prototype of the collective farmer was a random passerby, who is an employee of Moscow telephone exchanges.

The creation of the sculpture took 185 tons, more than 2 months of work by the country's best architects.

How was the delivery to France and after the exhibition events

To prepare the transportation of the monument for the exhibition in Paris, 28 wagons were used, in which 56 parts of the "Worker and Collective Farm Girl" were neatly stored.

After 5 days of travel from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Germany, the products were delivered to their destination.

It is noteworthy that there were repeated acts of sabotage on the part of Western ill-wishers in order to prevent the presence of that target of the statue at the Paris exhibition.

To the delight of many visitors, the monument was finally assembled and became a real decoration. It was marked on the roads with marble, and the veins are its special attribute: the Soviet coat of arms with the symbols of 11 republics of the Soviet Union.

At the same time, we have to state a disappointing fact: part of the working group that participated in the creation of the architectural composition was repressed upon returning to the USSR. The gland itself received significant damage and recovered for a long time.

Today, the monument to the "Worker and Collective Farm Woman" based on the right side of the entrance to VDNKh.