Worker & Kolkhoz Woman Monument

The Worker and the Kolkhoz Woman are the ideal and symbol of the Soviet Era, and are a recognized standard of socialist realism. The sculpture contains two figures, male and female, who are looking forward and raising a hammer and sickle above their heads. The concept and design belong to the architect Boris Iofan. The monument was intended for the USSR at the international exhibition in Paris in 1937. It was originally designed and assembled in Moscow, then divided into 65 parts and transported to France, where it was reassembled. The sculpture was made of stainless chromium-nickel steel; the cladding of 0.5 mm thick sheets was attached to the internal frame, and the total mass of the monument exceeded 63 tons.

After the exhibition, the sculpture was transported to Moscow and installed on a ten-meter pedestal at the Northern entrance to the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition. In Paris, the sculpture stood on a 34-meter-high pavilion. Due to careless dismantling and transportation, the frame and cladding had to be significantly modified, deviating from the original design. Between 1938 and 2003, the sculpture was practically not restored; it had become ruined from exposure to the environment.

In 2003-2009, the sculpture was restored and installed on a pavilion that replicated Iofan’s original design for the Paris exhibition. The attributes in the hands of the sculpture’s heroes – the sickle and hammer – in 1937 were still interpreted primarily as emblems of peaceful, free labor.