Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy

Listen first. Water falls from gilded fountains, and gravel crunches underfoot. Somewhere a loudspeaker plays an old Soviet song. Long avenues stretch ahead, lined with trees, lamps and palaces. Gold leaf catches the light on columns, wheat sheaves and stone fruit. This is VDNKh, the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy. Muscovites usually just say the initials, spoken almost as one word. It is part park, part museum, and part dream of a country that no longer exists.

The story begins in 1939. That year, the site opened as the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition. Its purpose was clear. It would show the whole Soviet Union, and the world, the success of collective farming. Each region and republic received a pavilion of its own. Inside were prize cattle, giant vegetables, new machines and charts of rising harvests. This was a showroom for an ideology, built at the scale of a small city.

The timing carries a dark weight. The 1930s were the years of forced collectivisation and terrible famine in parts of the Soviet countryside. The exhibition presented abundance — golden grain, fat livestock, smiling farmers. Many visitors today walk these avenues knowing both stories at once. The beauty here is real. So is the distance between the images on the walls and the lives of many people who worked the land.

War interrupted everything soon after the opening. The exhibition closed during the Second World War and reopened in the 1950s, rebuilt and larger than before. In 1959, it received the name you hear today. Its scope grew beyond farming to include industry, science, transport and space. The new name reflected a new message. The Soviet state now wanted to show progress in every field, from tractors to satellites.

You probably came through the main entrance arch. Look back at it when you can. On top stand two figures, a tractor driver and a collective farm woman. Together they raise a sheaf of wheat towards the sky. The arch works like a theatre curtain. Behind it, the main avenue leads your eye straight to the Central Pavilion. Its tall spire ends in a star, and the whole axis feels designed for parades.

Now walk on to the Friendship of Peoples fountain. Sixteen golden female figures stand in a circle around a great basket of wheat. Each figure represents a Soviet republic of that era. Here is a detail many visitors miss. There were sixteen republics when the fountain was designed, not the fifteen most people remember. One of them, the Karelo-Finnish republic, was later merged into Russia. Its maiden still stands here, faithful to a country that was redrawn.

Each woman wears the traditional dress of her republic. Look closely at the hairstyles, the headdresses and the patterns on the skirts. Some carry fruit, some carry grain, some carry cotton. In summer, the jets rise high and a fine mist drifts across the square. Children run along the stone edge. Older visitors often sit quietly on benches and watch. For many families from former Soviet republics, this circle has a personal meaning.

Further on, you reach the Stone Flower fountain. Its design comes from the Ural tales of the writer Pavel Bazhov. In those stories, a stone carver tries all his life to make a flower from malachite that looks truly alive. The fountain is a giant blossom of stone and colourful mosaic. Around its basin, look for small sculptures of fruit, vegetables and grain. The whole fountain celebrates craft, patience and the riches of the earth.

The pavilions themselves are the real treasure of this place. Each republic tried to express its own identity in architecture. You will see carved stone, bright ceramic tiles, painted ceilings and decorative domes. Some pavilions look like palaces, others like temples to industry. A here is a second surprise. Over the decades, many facades were simplified or covered. Restoration work in recent years has brought back long-hidden ornament, so some buildings now look closer to their first designs.

Near the far end of the main avenue stands the Cosmos pavilion. In front of it rises a full-size model of the Vostok rocket. A rocket of this type carried Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, in 1961. The rocket stands on its tail, pointed at the clouds, and it looks surprisingly slender up close. Inside the pavilion, exhibitions follow the history of Soviet and Russian space flight. The rocket is a favourite place for photos, especially in clear light.

After the Soviet Union ended in 1991, this exhibition went through hard years. The site became the All-Russian Exhibition Centre. Many pavilions turned into markets for cheap electronics, clothes and garden goods. Paint faded, and fountains broke down. Muscovites from that time remember plastic signs covering old mosaics. Large-scale restoration began in the 2010s, and the old name VDNKh came back in 2014. The markets moved out, and museums, exhibitions and cafes moved in.

At the northern edge of the grounds stands the Worker and Kolkhoz Woman. Vera Mukhina created this steel sculpture for the 1937 world exhibition in Paris. A male industrial worker raises a hammer, and a female farm worker raises a sickle. Together they form the Soviet hammer and sickle. Their clothes sweep backwards as if caught in a strong wind. After a long restoration, the statue returned in 2009 on a new, taller pavilion base.

Before you leave, pause on one of the long benches along the avenue. Look up and to the north-east. On a clear day, you can see the thin Ostankino television tower above the trees. Behind you, the fountains keep falling. Around you, people skate, cycle, eat ice cream and take photos of golden statues. This place was built to praise a system. Today, mostly, it belongs to the people who simply come here to walk.