Worker and Kolkhoz Woman

This colossal stainless-steel sculpture near the VDNKh exhibition centre shows a male worker and a female collective farmer striding forward together, raising a hammer and sickle above their heads. Designed by Vera Mukhina, it first crowned the Soviet pavilion at the 1937 Paris international exposition, where it faced the German pavilion in a charged confrontation of ideologies. Restored and remounted on a tall pavilion housing a small museum, it remains an icon of Soviet monumental art and once served as the emblem of a major film studio.