A permanent trade-fair-cum-shopping-centre for Russian producers, theVDNKh was built to impress the capital world with the superiority and the commercial success of the Soviet system. Unfortunately, its present day conditions have come to reflect the state of the national economy in ways far different from what its designers intended it to. Pride of place was given to the Space Obelisk , a 100m high rocket in orbit made of titanium. The Space Obelisk was unveiled to the public in 1964, three years after Yuri Gagarin landmark space flight. Past the main entrance are colossal twin figures of the Worker and the Collective Farm Girl., symbolic of the workers of the Soviet Union. Though they were intended to embody Soviet industrial progress, the final irony was that the statues were handmade!
