The most famous couple in the USSR, or how the monument "worker and collective farm woman" was created, and what is inside it. "Worker and Collective Farm Woman"
The standard of socialist realism was the name given to this monumental work by Vera Mukhina, which became one of the main symbols of the USSR. The idea of the sculpture belongs to the architect Iofan, who came up with the idea of combining the ideas of two ancient statues at once - the "Tyranoclasts" (Critias) and the "Nike of Samothrace" (unknown author). In the first case, the architect was inspired by the common line of sculptures of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who plotted against the tyrant Hipparchus. In the second case - the dynamics and patriotic sound of the sculpture.
The state order provided for the placement of the sculpture at the entrance to the Soviet pavilion at the world exhibition in. Since the pavilions and the USSR were opposite each other, the sculptural composition by all possible artistic and monumental means had to demonstrate the ideological superiority of communism over Nazism.
Vera Mukhina approached the creation of the main ideological work with her usual scope and talent. Two figures - a worker and a peasant woman, raising symbols of the USSR high above their heads - hammer and sickle. They seem to be directed upwards, they are united by a moment of triumph, a great victory. The idea of victorious labor and the eternal indestructible union of the proletariat and the peasantry - the main communist dogma - in the performance of the great Vera Mukhina looks immutable and attractive.
To achieve an additional effect, it was decided to make the sculpture from thin sheets of stainless steel, which reflected light and changed its color depending on the sunlight.
In May 1937, a sculpture 58 meters high (25 meters of the actual sculpture and 33 meters of pedestal) adorned the exhibition pavilion of the Soviet Union. It is authentically known that the intelligence of the USSR was seriously interested in the design of the German pavilion, as a result, the height of the Soviet pavilion was several meters higher, which undoubtedly pleased the country's leadership and upset the Germans.
Parisians went to look at the sculpture several times a day, because it constantly changed its color - at sunrise it was pink, during the day it was bright silver, and at sunset it was golden.
After the end of the exhibition, the French began to raise funds in order to buy the sculpture from the USSR and leave it in Paris. Stalin categorically refused.
Since the late 1940s, "Worker and Collective Farm Woman" has been the main symbol of the Mosfilm film studio. Sculpture is often seen in documentaries and feature films. Now she has become the most impressive and talented monument of her era.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the monument underwent a serious and protracted restoration. Since 2009, the standard of socialist realism has again adorned the entrance to the All-Russian Exhibition Center.
July 1 marks 127 years since birth Soviet sculptor Vera Mukhina, whose most famous work is the monument "Worker and Collective Farm Woman". It was called a symbol of the Soviet era and the standard of socialist realism, although at one time the sculpture was almost rejected due to the fact that in the folds of a peasant woman's dress someone seemed to have the silhouette of the enemy of the people L. Trotsky.
In 1936, the USSR was preparing to participate in the World Exhibition of Arts and Technology in Paris. The architect Boris Iofan proposed to make the Soviet pavilion in the form of a springboard, dynamically directed upwards, with a sculpture on the roof. Boris Iofan explained his idea this way: “In my idea, the Soviet pavilion was drawn as a triumphant building, reflecting with its dynamics the rapid growth of the achievements of the world's first socialist state, the enthusiasm and cheerfulness of our great era of building socialism ... So that any person at the first glance at our pavilion I felt that this was the pavilion of the Soviet Union… The sculpture seemed to me made of light light metal, as if flying forward, like the unforgettable Louvre Nike – a winged victory.”
The exposition itself was rather meager, in fact the pavilion was the main exhibit. The worker and the collective farm woman personified the owners of the Soviet land - the proletariat and the peasantry. The idea of the composition of Iofan was prompted by the antique statue "Tyranoslayers". The combination of a sickle and a hammer is also not a find of Iofan and Mukhina; this idea has already been embodied in the works of some artists. The architect developed a general project, and the sculptor had to find its specific solution.
In the summer of 1936, a competition was announced among sculptors, at which V. Andreev, M. Manizer, I. Shadr and V. Mukhina presented their projects. The main finding of Mukhina was the apparent lightness and airiness of the massive sculpture, which was achieved thanks to the matter “flying” behind the figures. “A lot of controversy was aroused by the piece of matter fluttering behind me, which I introduced into the composition, symbolizing those red panels, without which we cannot imagine a single mass demonstration. This “scarf” was so necessary that without it the whole composition and connection of the statue with the building would fall apart,” Mukhina said. Her project was approved, with the condition of "dressing" the figures, originally conceived naked.
At the beginning of 1937, a denunciation to Mukhina was received from the factory where the assembly took place, stating that the work could not be completed on schedule, since the sculptor constantly interrupted work and required corrections, and in some places the steel shell of the frame was clearly the profile of the enemy of the people L. Trotsky is visible. Then they did not react to the denunciation, but upon returning from the exhibition, the commissioner of the Soviet pavilion I. Mezhlauk and several engineers who worked on the creation of the statue were arrested.
The dimensions of the statue were impressive: it reached a height of 23.5 meters and weighed 75 tons. For transportation to the exhibition, the sculpture was cut into 65 pieces and loaded onto 28 platforms. After being assembled in Paris, the statue made a splash. The French graphic artist F. Mazerel admitted: “Your sculpture amazed us. We spend whole evenings talking and arguing about it.” Picasso marveled at how stainless steel looked against the lilac Parisian sky.
After the end of the exhibition, the sculpture was again dismantled and transported to Moscow. There it was restored from thick sheets of steel and installed on a much lower pedestal in front of the entrance to the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition. In 1947, the statue "Worker and Collective Farm Woman" became the symbol of the Mosfilm film studio. And Vera Mukhina deservedly received the unspoken title
"Worker and Collective Farm Woman" is a truly unique monument of the Soviet era. Few people know that this world-famous monument and the most ordinary faceted glass have the same creator. A worker and a collective farm woman, on raised hands, raising tools to the sky as a symbol of the union of the proletariat and the peasantry. How much in this sculptural duet for the heart of the Soviet merged. HistoryTime will try to comprehend this now lost significance, together with its esteemed readers.
The idea of creating a sculpture belongs to the architect Boris Iofan. "Worker and Collective Farm Woman" were supposed to personify the power of our country in the USSR pavilion at the Paris Exhibition in 1937 - for this purpose they were created. To implement the idea, a closed competition was held among the most famous sculptors of those times. The victory was won by the project of Vera Mukhin, in which the main figures froze in a confident movement not only forward, but also upward - as befits real Soviet symbols (remember, as in the famous Soviet song: “higher and higher and higher”).
From afar, it seems that the Mukhina workers are intertwined in a single monolith. But no! The monument of monumental art consists of 5000 (!) Details. It was assembled for a couple of months, laying sheets of stainless steel on a specially created frame and fixing it with spot welding. It was the first experience of such a welding process in the country.
At the Paris exhibition, the Soviet pavilion was symbolically located opposite the German one - and in the middle, of course, the Eiffel Tower. Recall that by that time Hitler had been in power for about four years. The Nazis deliberately designed their pavilion a few meters higher than the Soviet one, and at the top, for greater imposingness, they installed an iron eagle. However, the main imperial bird looked so tiny compared to a pair of giant Soviet hard workers that it was perceived almost comically. They say that the audience considered this spectacle ridiculous, and the Worker and Collective Farm Woman monument was applauded more than once.
At the end of the exhibition, the sculpture was returned to Moscow, where it stood immovable for almost 70 years. In 1987, they decided to move the monument from the northern entrance of VDNKh, but it turned out that it needed a major overhaul of the frame, which was corroded by corrosion. However, due to the crisis of the 90s, the monument was remembered only in 2003. It was dismantled and sent to the workshop of the Central Research Institute of Steel Structures. V.A. Kucherenko.
Establishment of the monument "Worker and Collective Farm Woman"For six years, they tried to do the monument thoroughly, but there was not enough funding. As a result, the right to restore was given to a company engaged in the design of sewer collectors - as it turned out, masters of a wide profile. The team and management took a responsible attitude to the task entrusted to them and developed a plan in detail. The sculptor Vadim Tserkovnikov, who fought for the restoration of the masterpiece for six years, became the scientific supervisor of the restorers.
The frame was restored according to the old model. Each of the 5,000 parts was photographed and color-coded on a computer to determine which parts needed to be restored and which needed to be completely replaced. As a result, it turned out that only 500 elements had become unusable. In November 2009, the restoration of the sculpture "Worker and Collective Farm Woman" was successfully completed.
On November 28 of the same year, with the help of a special crane, the monument was installed on a special pedestal, where a museum and exhibition center was later opened.
The image of the Soviet symbol could be immortalized on the screensaver of the Mosfilm film studio, postage stamps, and the medal "Laureate of VDNKh of the USSR."
The most famous work of the Soviet sculptor Vera Mukhina is the Worker and Collective Farm Woman monument.
It was called a symbol of the Soviet era and the standard of socialist realism, although at one time the sculpture was almost rejected due to the fact that in the folds of a peasant woman's dress, someone seemed to have the silhouette of the enemy of the people L. Trotsky ... 
Project of the Soviet pavilion by architect B. Iofan
In 1936, the USSR was preparing to participate in the World Exhibition of Arts and Technology in Paris. The architect Boris Iofan proposed to make the Soviet pavilion in the form of a springboard, dynamically directed upwards, with a sculpture on the roof.
Boris Iofan explained his idea this way:
“In my idea, the Soviet pavilion was drawn as a triumphal building, reflecting with its dynamics the rapid growth of the achievements of the world's first socialist state, the enthusiasm and cheerfulness of our great era of building socialism ... So that any person at the first glance at our pavilion would feel that this is the pavilion of the Soviet Union ... The sculpture seemed to me made of light light metal, as if flying forward, like the unforgettable Louvre Nike - a winged victory. 
Soviet pavilion at an exhibition in Paris, 1937 
The exposition itself was rather meager, in fact the pavilion was the main exhibit. The worker and the collective farm woman personified the owners of the Soviet land - the proletariat and the peasantry. The idea of the composition of Iofan was prompted by the antique statue "Tyranoslayers".
The combination of a sickle and a hammer is also not a find of Iofan and Mukhina; this idea has already been embodied in the works of some artists. The architect developed a general project, and the sculptor had to find its specific solution. 
Left - Tyrannobortsy. 5th century BC e. On the right - a sculpture by Vera Mukhina *Worker and Collective Farm Woman*
In the summer of 1936, a competition was announced among sculptors, at which V. Andreev, M. Manizer, I. Shadr and V. Mukhina presented their projects. The main finding of Mukhina was the apparent lightness and airiness of the massive sculpture, which was achieved thanks to the matter “flying” behind the figures.
“A lot of controversy was aroused by the piece of matter fluttering behind me, which I introduced into the composition, symbolizing those red panels, without which we cannot imagine a single mass demonstration. This “scarf” was so necessary that without it the whole composition and connection of the statue with the building would fall apart,” Mukhina said.
Her project was approved, with the condition of "dressing" the figures, originally conceived naked. 
Sculpture projects by V. Andreev and M. Manizer 
Plaster model by B. Iofan and sculpture project by V. Mukhina
At the beginning of 1937, a denunciation to Mukhina was received from the factory where the assembly took place, stating that the work could not be completed on schedule, since the sculptor constantly interrupted work and required corrections, and in some places the steel shell of the frame was clearly the profile of the enemy of the people L. Trotsky is visible.
Then they did not react to the denunciation, but upon returning from the exhibition, the commissioner of the Soviet pavilion I. Mezhlauk and several engineers who worked on the creation of the statue were arrested. 
Vera Mukhina in the workshop, 1940s 
On the left is the assembly of the statue at the pilot plant. On the right is the assembled sculpture.
The dimensions of the statue were impressive: it reached a height of 23.5 meters and weighed 75 tons. For transportation to the exhibition, the sculpture was cut into 65 pieces and loaded onto 28 platforms. After being assembled in Paris, the statue made a splash.
The French graphic artist F. Mazerel admitted: “Your sculpture amazed us. We spend whole evenings talking and arguing about it.” Picasso marveled at how stainless steel looked against the lilac Parisian sky. 
Statue assembly process
Romain Rolland wrote: “At the International Exhibition, on the banks of the Seine, two young Soviet giants raise a sickle and a hammer, and we hear how a heroic hymn pours from their chest, which calls the peoples to freedom, to unity and will lead them to victory.” 
Working model of the sculpture 
After the end of the exhibition, the sculpture was again dismantled and transported to Moscow. There it was restored from thick sheets of steel and installed on a much lower pedestal in front of the entrance to the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition. 
In 1947, the statue "Worker and Collective Farm Woman" became the symbol of the Mosfilm film studio. And Vera Mukhina deservedly received the unspoken title of the first lady of Soviet monumental sculpture.
"Worker and Collective Farm Girl", the unofficial emblem of the Soviet Union, considered by many critics to be the greatest piece of sculpture of the 20th century, has been under restoration for four years. In the meantime, the square at the Northern entrance of VDNKh, where the monument has been located since 1938, will soon undergo drastic changes - the famous Montreal pavilion, symbolizing the TU-144 flying into the sky, will disappear, instead of it there will be a large multifunctional center. The final decision on the location of the statue has not yet been made. Meanwhile, during the 20th century, many options for its placement in different parts of the city were discussed. The materials published below are provided by the Scientific and Design Department "Protection of the Historical and Cultural Complex" of the State Unitary Enterprise NIIPI of the General Plan of Moscow.
The idea of crowning the Soviet pavilion of the World Exhibition in Paris with a pair of metal statues "Worker and Collective Farm Woman" belongs to the architect B.M. Iofan. Iofan, apparently relying on the experience of creating the American Statue of Liberty, intended to make a sculpture of duralumin, because he imagined the statue in light and bright, but not shiny metal. Professor P.N. Lvov, a prominent specialist in metal and methods of its constructive use, convinced the architect to use stainless chromium-nickel steel, connected not with rivets (as was done in America), but by welding. In the form of a test, the head of the famous sculpture “David” by Michelangelo was “knocked out”, and this experiment turned out to be very successful, although, as Iofan notes, all sculptors were initially skeptical about steel.
B. Iofan wrote that while working on the competition project, he “very soon had an image ... of sculpture, a young man and a girl, personifying the owners of the Soviet land - the working class and the collective farm peasantry. They raise high the emblem of the Land of the Soviets - the hammer and sickle. However, recently there have been claims that the “poster” hand gesture with a certain emblem, even the images of a young man and a girl with a hammer and a sickle, all this has already been repeatedly beaten in Soviet art. A. Strigalev claims that Iofan only "resolutely turned to what" was in the air "- this was precisely the strength and persuasiveness of his plan." Iofan's secretary, I.Yu.
In the summer of 1936, a closed competition was announced for a statue for the Paris Pavilion. V.A. Andreev, M.G. Manizer, V.I. Mukhina, I.D. Shadr. For direct assistance in sculpting the statue, Vera Ignatievna invited two of her former students from Vkhutemas 3.G. Ivanov and N.G. Zelenskaya. The deadline for preparing competitive projects was short - about three months.
Mukhina did not work on the sketch for long, but very intensely. The objects of her search were draperies and the position of the free hands of the worker and collective farmer. She tried to connect the free hands of a man and a woman "inside" the group, and put the attributes of the worker in the right hand, and the collective farmer in the left, so that a rather significant spatial gap was obtained between the sickle and the hammer. Draperies, giving horizontal folds, located in Iofan's sketch at the level of the legs of the characters, she tried to move up, depicting them in the form of a banner or banner immediately after the emblem, that is, at the level of the shoulders and heads of the worker and collective farmer.
Mukhina in her project boldly went to change the architectural design. She abandoned the static diagonal composition of the statue and, by introducing a flying scarf and thrown back hands, made this composition dynamic and horizontal; instead of a solid mass of stuck together figures, airiness appeared. In addition, Vera Ignatievna demanded a change in the size of the monument, replacing the original equal size of the statue and the building with the "golden section". All these innovations, which were unexpected for the architect and the jury, hindered the final decision for a long time. In a private conversation, the commissioner of the exhibition, I.I. Mezhlauk, asked Mukhina to "dress" the statue, since, according to Iofan's original design, the figures were naked. Also, according to rumors, strong objections were caused by a scarf that did not have any "semantic" meaning. I had to make three versions of the statue: without a scarf, with a single scarf, and with a forked scarf. Mukhina also disagreed with Iofanov's concept of the nature of the general image of the statue and even the entire pavilion.
B.M. Iofan conceived the Soviet pavilion as a "triumphal building". IN AND. Mukhina wrote that “having received the project of the pavilion from the architect Iofan, I immediately felt that the group should express, first of all, not the solemn nature of the figures, but the dynamics of our era, that creative impulse that I see everywhere in our country and which is so dear to me. ".
This was a fundamental change in the original design of the architect. The fact that Iofan agreed with him says a lot. Mukhina not only captured the general mood of the then Soviet society more subtly and correctly, but rather, more broadly than the architect himself, she understood the character and potential figurative possibilities inherent in the architecture of the pavilion. She sharply increased the horizontal orientation of the group and the movement of the statue forward (in fact, she did not even strengthen, but created this movement, only faintly outlined in Iofan's project). Enumerating the changes she made, Vera Ignatievna wrote about this: “For a greater strength of mutual composition with the horizontal dynamics of the building, a horizontal movement of the entire group and most of the sculptural volumes was introduced; an essential part of the composition was a large cloth of matter, flying behind the group and giving the necessary airiness of flight ... "
The creation of this "flying matter" was the most significant departure from Iofan's original sketch and at the same time one of Mukhina's most remarkable finds. But initially the scarf also had one more, purely service role: the drapery of some parts of the body.
A little more than six months remained before the statue was sent to Paris, and the project still had not been approved. Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars E.K. Antonov strongly objected to the scarf. Molotov did not like the model without the scarf, but he generally supported Antonov. Finally they asked: “What does the author think?” Vera Ignatievna said that a model without a scarf is simply no good. After a rather sharp discussion, Molotov said: "Well, let's believe the author," and the medium model with a lighter scarf was adopted. On November 11, 1936, V. Mukhina's project was finally approved for execution in the material.
Insanely paced work began: first, the creation of a statue in 1/15 of its natural size, and then its enlargement and transfer to steel at the TsNIIMASH plant. The 1/15 model was made at home, in Vera Ignatyevna's workshop room, which, despite the height of the ceilings (about 6 m), had no overhead light, and she was very afraid of unaccounted for angles and lighting effects. Therefore, she asked one of her former students, the architect Boris Komarov, to organize a test of the statue's daylight. A small 1/100 model was painted with silver paint and taken to the Planetarium, where the position and height of the sun in Paris was modeled on the apparatus in relation to the orientation of the statue. After that, Vera Ignatievna calmed down a little. Since the statue had to look not only from a distance, but also directly from below, from the entrance to the pavilion, many photographs were taken from such "risky" points.
Even before the final approval of the project, the department of metal structures for the construction of the Palace of Soviets received the task to develop the design of the sculptural group. The main frame was manufactured by the Stalmost plant, while the details of the statue and its complete assembly were to be carried out by the TsNIIMASH experimental plant directly in the workshop and in the yard of the plant under the guidance of one of the "steel people", as Mukhina called them, Professor P.N. Lvov. The main supporting frame of the statue is a riveted structure made of thick sheets of mild steel. It was made in record time - 3 weeks. The weight of the frame is about 48 tons.
The shell was hung on the base with the help of an intermediate frame made of angular iron, and was a series of small trusses. When the shell was blown with sand outside and inside, the entire frame was painted with red lead. The shell took 8.5 tons of stainless steel, and about 15 tons of steel of various profiles for the intermediate frame. For the engineers who were tasked with building the almost 24-meter statue, this was a completely new undertaking, having no examples in the history of technology. Professor N.S. Streletsky called the design "exotic".
To start work at the plant, it was supposed to receive a six-meter model from the sculptors and make an increase on it. However, there was not enough time to prepare such a model, and “at one of the very stormy meetings” P.N. Lvov proposed to build a statue using a 15-fold increase. It was a bold and risky proposal, but it gave the sculptors the opportunity to prepare a final model one and a half meters high within a month. The method of 15-fold increase gave only relatively accurate overall dimensions, but the relief of the form suffered greatly. An error of 1-2 millimeters led to large distortions. In general, in the process of making a life-size statue, about 200 thousand coordinate points were measured on the surface of the model, and 23 people of technicians and draftsmen participated in this work.
And yet, due to lack of time, it was impossible to make detailed drawings of all the blocks of the shell. Vera Ignatievna, together with Zhuravlev, supervised the creation of intermediate templates and, according to them, wooden forms in the size of nature. These were, as it were, huge “negative” prints of the surface of the statue, there were several hundred of them, since the entire shell was divided into 60 blocks. For Mukhina, Zelenskaya and Ivanova, the correction of these forms was a very difficult task - after all, it was necessary all the time to imagine the appearance of a relatively small (in relation to the total volume) section of the surface of the statue, and even in a “positive” form, increased compared to the model by 15 once.
From an engineering point of view, one of the most difficult elements of the composition turned out to be a fluttering scarf held by the collective farmer's hand thrown back. It had a size of about 30 meters, a reach of 10 meters, weighed five and a half tons and had to stay horizontal without any support. Finally, engineers B. Dzerzhkovich and A. Prikhozhan calculated a special frame truss for the scarf, which reliably ensures its free position in space. But the director of the plant S. Tambovtsev, in order to protect himself, wrote a denunciation to the government. The statue, he argued, could not be finished on time, because Mukhina deliberately interrupted work, demanding endless corrections, and even came up with a scarf that could break the whole group in a gust of wind. To make his “signal” more convincing, he wrote that, according to experts, in some places of the steel shell of the frame, the profile of the “enemy of the people” L.D. Trotsky.
At that time, this denunciation did not cause any special consequences. But when, after the end of the Paris exhibition and the return of the statue to Moscow, the commissioner of the Soviet pavilion Ivan Mezhlauk, as well as several engineers working on the statue, were arrested, they were also reminded of Tambovtsev's denunciation. They were rehabilitated after Stalin's death, Mezhlauk - posthumously.
When everything was finished, the dimensions of the statue were specified. Its height to the end of the sickle is 23.5 meters, the length of the worker's arm is 8.5 meters, the height of his head is more than 2 meters, the total weight of the statue is almost 75 tons. A few days later, the dismantling of the sculpture, cleaning and blowing with sand began. Everything was packed in boxes, lined with felt. The sculpture, with its frame, derrick and tools, occupied the entire train—twenty-eight cars. In Poland, the train was delayed under the pretext that some boxes might not pass through the tunnel. The engineer Rafael, who accompanied the train, cut off pieces of the statue with an autogenous machine, so that they could be welded in place later.
The main French building at the exhibition was the Palais de Chaillot, erected on the Trocadero hill. Below and to the left on the bank of the Seine, on the Passy embankment, a narrow rectangular area was allocated for the pavilion of the USSR, and opposite it, across Warsaw Square, approximately the same rectangle was allocated for the pavilion of Germany. From the opposite bank of the Seine, this whole composition was perceived as a planning reflection of the socio-political situation of the then Europe.
Project B.M. Iofana was a long building rising in rapid ledges, crowned with a pair of sculptural groups. The pavilion itself was supposed to be an exhibit, and the most impressive one at that. Moreover, a rather poor exposition was hidden behind the flashy forms of the triumphant building.
The assembly of the statue was completed in record time - in just eleven days, instead of the expected twenty-five. On May 1, 1937, she shone in the sun in the sky of Paris. As the statue grew and dressed in a shell, it made an increasing impression on friends and foes alike. One morning, shortly before the end of construction, one of the Spanish workers who worked at the nearby pavilion of the Republican Spain came to the Soviet pavilion and advised them to urgently inspect the assembly crane winches. And not in vain - one of the cables turned out to be filed. In the event of a load on the crane boom, it would inevitably burst, leading to a catastrophe and, probably, the hopeless destruction of the statue.
In April, the Minister of Economics J. Schacht came to the construction of the German pavilion. He demanded that the German pavilion be higher than the Soviet one, after which round-the-clock work began on its upper part and the tower climbed up again. As a result, the huge emblem of the Nazi Reich - an eagle holding a swastika in its claws, was right in front of the faces of the "Worker and Collective Farm Woman". However, the fantastic dynamics of the statue, emphasized by the growth of the architectural masses of the pavilion, so dominated the general panorama of the banks of the Seine that the static tower in front of the sculptures not only did not stop their rapid run, but seemed simply an inappropriate obstacle.
In a building of such magnitude and character as the Paris Pavilion was, architecture was to dominate. Meanwhile, a clear impression was created that the pavilion was erected only in order to be a pedestal for a sculptural group. Thus, what Iofan could not get rid of in the project of the Palace of the Soviets was repeated in Paris: a gigantic enlarged monument turned out. By cladding the side facades not with Gazgan marble, but with a composition of simentolite - a patented plaster with an admixture of natural stone chips - and designing the main vertical volume without windows, dissected only by vertical rods, Iofan further emphasized the "service" of this central part. And later, when constructing a pavilion for the New York World's Fair, where he repeated the same basic scheme - a sculpture crowning the central pylon - the architect chose for implementation the least interesting and almost completely repeating his sketch project of the statue "Worker" by V.A. Andreeva.
When the exhibition closed, there was a desire in France to leave the monument in Paris, and even the question of raising funds to buy it from the Soviet government was raised. But it was already decided to dismantle the statue and transport it to Moscow. A team of workers and engineers was sent for dismantling, who did not know the complex specifics of the sculpture. The statue was cut into pieces by an autogenous machine and dumped on platforms. Only the heads and the male hand of the statue reached Moscow without damage. However, the success and public outcry of The Worker and Collective Farm Woman were so great that a decision was made to install a statue at the entrance to the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition that opened in 1938.
In Moscow, it was restored from thicker steel sheets (up to 2 mm) and mounted on a much lower pedestal in front of the Northern entrance to the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (the layout of the square and the monument was carried out by architects N. Bykova and I. Taranov). The original design of the pedestal, which repeated the 34-meter tower of the pavilion, was hastily replaced with a low, 11-meter one, that is, 3 times lower than the pylon of the Paris Pavilion. The failure of this decision was clear beforehand and became even more evident after the installation of the statue.
The biggest dream of V.I. Mukhina was to stage "Worker and Collective Farm Woman" over Moscow, on the Lenin Hills. All subsequent years, until her death, Vera Ignatievna repeatedly addressed the government with letters about the need to transfer the statue, and developed projects for its installation in various places in Moscow. Her personal drawings for the last two versions have been preserved. In one it was supposed to put a statue on a high pedestal on the arrow of the Moscow River. In the second version, completed already in the hospital, she proposed to install a sculpture on the Lenin Hills, on the high edge of the Moskva River, so that the height of the bank, without any special costs, would give the desired height and flight to her "children", as she affectionately called both figures.
Later, in 1962, Mukhina's colleagues in the creation of "Worker and Collective Farm Woman" - Professor P.N. Lvov, sculptors Z.G. Ivanova and N.G. Zelenskaya, again appealed to the government with a proposal to move the statue. In 1975, the presidium of the Academy of Arts addressed the government with the same proposal. This time, the Moscow City Council decided to move the statue and prepare a higher pedestal. The design was entrusted to B.M. Iofan. But at the beginning of 1976, being ill and continuing to work on the project of a new pedestal in Barvikha, Iofan died.
In 1987, another competition was announced to find a place for the famous group. The undeveloped space near the new building of the Central Exhibition Hall on the Crimean embankment, opposite the TsPKiO im. Gorky. But neither Mukhina's repeated letters to the government (the last one she sent shortly before her death), nor all subsequent public appeals led to nothing, and the open competition ended in a strange but convenient decision: to leave everything as it was, since "transfer of the statue is complicated and does not guarantee its preservation.
It should be noted that Mukhina and Iofan also considered the option of preserving the usual location of the monument, with the transfer of the sculptural group to a higher pedestal or the restored Paris Pavilion. When placing the sculpture in front of the entrance to the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition, a unique urban planning situation was created, which made it possible to emphasize the plastic, silhouette and symbolic characteristics of the sculptural group to a large extent. The monument was placed on the axis of the main entrance to the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition and was perceived against the backdrop of open, undeveloped space and greenery, without including the background urban development, in addition, it was delegated the role of one of the main exhibits of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition.
But over time, the situation has changed. In the 1950s The northern entrance lost its status as the main one, in the 1970s. the Montreal pavilion was installed behind the sculpture, from the 2nd floor. 20th century the territories surrounding VDNKh are covered by a wave of industrial housing construction. Finally, at the turn of the 20th - 21st centuries, the perception of the sculptural group turned out to be distorted due to the construction of an overpass along the highway of Prospekt Mira. In 2003-2005, a line of a monorail transport system passed along the Longitudinal Passage, visually separating the spaces of the exhibition complex and the location of the monument. In the fall of 2003, the "Worker and Kolkhoz Woman" were dismantled for repair and restoration work. Recently, a decision was made to demolish the Montreal Pavilion and build a shopping center in its place. At the same time, it is proposed to return the “Worker and Collective Farm Girl” to their original place, placing them on a pedestal 40.6 m high.
At the same time, the compositional role of sculpture and the zone of its urban planning influence will undoubtedly increase. But at the same time, new construction at the Northern Entrance may adversely affect the traditional perception of both the Worker and Collective Farm Woman monument and the All-Russian Exhibition Center complex. In conclusion, we present an advisory section of the urban planning study conducted by the specialists of the State Unitary Enterprise NIIPI General Plan in order to verify the parameters of the projected multifunctional complex.
Based on the visual landscape analysis and expert evaluation of its results, the following conclusions can be drawn:
In general, the scale of the projected complex (with a maximum height of the exhibition pavilions of 26.8 m and a multifunctional center of 38.2 m / +182.2 m - 45.4 m + 189.4 m) is commensurate with the scale of the existing urban environment. The conducted studies have shown that the height parameters of the exhibition buildings will not cause a distortion of the existing conditions for the perception of cultural heritage objects of the All-Russian Exhibition Center complex. The conditions for an acceptable change in the perception of the arch of the Northern Entrance are determined in previous studies. Forecasting the urban situation from distant and medium-distance points of perception proved the insignificant nature of the visibility of these buildings, or completely excluded the possibility of their visibility (taking into account green spaces and newly built buildings).
More controversial is the visual perception of the three-dimensional composition of the multifunctional center with the sculptural group "Worker and Kolkhoz Woman", which is a state-protected object of cultural heritage (a monument of monumental art) of federal significance (security No. 18, Decree of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR N 1327 of 08/30/1960).
The authors of the project under study did not consider the issue of restoring the Parisian pavilion of B. Iofan. According to the materials presented, the sculpture is transferred to a high pedestal of about 40 m, which, as studies have shown, greatly increases its compositional significance. At the same time, in connection with the protected status of the monument, the issue of a new pedestal for sculpture, solved in new forms or restored in accordance with the original decision, should be accepted by the Commission of the Moscow Heritage Committee in the prescribed manner.
The project involves emphasizing the monument with pavilions of a multifunctional center, located around it like an amphitheater. It should be noted that the location of the center's buildings - on the territory of the protected zone of cultural heritage objects that are part of the All-Russian Exhibition Center ensemble, does not comply with the urban planning regulation regime determined for this territory by the PPM No. 83 of February 7, 2006.
It is recommended to develop options for design proposals aimed at the compositional unity of the monument and the created architectural environment: it is possible to solve the stylistic forms of the pedestal in the spirit of the original project of B. Iofan, to develop a variant of the volume-spatial solution of pavilions and buildings with more neutral plastic characteristics. Permissible parameters for the regeneration of territories within the boundaries of protected zones are determined by the Commission for the Regulation of Urban Planning Activities in the Territories of Protected Zones. to this entry. You can
