The first people in paradise fed on the fruits of paradise gardens, they did not build houses and did not sew clothes for themselves. When the Lord, for original sin, expelled Adam and Eve from paradise, he commanded them to work, "to earn their bread by the sweat of their faces." The whole history of the human race is connected with work - with this divine command, the nature of which lies in the will of the Lord.
Communism in the Soviet Union was a religion of labor. Labor was deified and was a god: “Labor will become the sovereign of the world.” In the Soviet Union, the sculptures of metallurgists, steel makers, grain-growers, and scientists were like antique statues. They were placed on the tops of Stalinist houses, which resembled temples in their appearance.
Mukhinskaya sculpture “Worker and Kolkhoz Woman” is one of the greatest religious images. Two working people - a man and a woman that were once driven out of paradise - are now returning to this paradise, which they create with their own hands. Shining with silver, aspiring to heaven, a man and a woman are like angels, with their heads glowing around the air. The brilliant sculptor Vera Mukhina comprehended the mystic of labor and portrayed two glowing, hardworking people.
During the collapse of the Soviet Union, work was overthrown from a divine pedestal, ceased to be valued, turned into a synonym for something insignificant, base. Great factories were shutting down - these containers of great labors. Work teams, which were able to build unprecedented machines, to build an unprecedented space civilization were dispersed. The golden calf occupied the pedestal on which the worker had recently towered. The banker, the money changer, the financial speculator became the masters of the world. Instead of labor, unlimited consumption, eating, and enjoyment were preached. This idleness lulls the conscience, the mind, the creativity in man, prompting him to more and more refined base pleasures.
As the state began to revive in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it, being revived from the ashes of the 90s, demanded works - stubborn, continuous, selfless. Factories were built, bridges were built, roads were laid, future Martian cities were designed. The fields were kneeling again, more recently, overgrown with weeds.
Construction sites of the present day: the Crimean Bridge, the Vostochny Cosmodrome, the gas liquefaction plant on the edge of the Arctic Ocean are the fruits of the great Russian labor, which is again becoming a mystical category.
The Crimean bridge leads us to the Crimean miracle. The Eastern Cosmodrome directs us to Mars. The Yamal plant in Sabetta turns the Arctic into a field of great deeds.
The Urals is the place where the great Russian labors were done from time immemorial. The Ural idea is labor: heavy, powerful, mighty, turning mountains, going deep into the earth, pouring streams of molten metal, producing gold ingots and the best tanks in the world.
Labor in the Urals is not just work that creates grandiose products: tanks, missiles, nuclear power plants. Labor becomes a category, creating the Russian state itself. Ural labor since Demidov won under Narva and Poltava. Labor of the forty first year was saved by the Russian state from Hitler. Tanks Uralvagonzavod in the forty-fifth year, danced the Russian quadrille on the ruins of the imperial office. Ural works created the Russian state between the three oceans.
But these works create, besides the earthly kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven, the God-man, the righteous, the man of great service. In the fairy tale, Bazhova Danila-master seeks to create a divine flower from cold underground stones - a symbol of immortal beauty and love. The stone flower of Bazhov is an image of the Ural dream, elevating a person to the heavenly flower beds - just like the scarlet flower of Aksakov is an image of the Eurasian dream that turns evil into good, deformity into beauty, hatred into love.
Tank T-34 - a formidable weapon, carrying death to enemies, the last refuge in which tank crews burned and died, became a Victory weapon, became a saint. He ascended to the pedestals in all cities of Russia, at all intersections of Russian roads. The monument T-34 is a monument to the great work and the Great Victory.
In Nizhny Tagil lives a man named Vladislav Tetyukhin. Having become a billionaire, one of the owners of the enormous titanium production, he sold his shares and, for the billions received, built an amazing medical center in the vicinity of Tagil, which has no equal in Europe. He dedicated his works and his wealth to the land that gave birth to him and to the people who raised him. He “distributed his possessions,” having accomplished a Christian feat that opens the way to the kingdom of heaven for people.
I just visited the Urals and was amazed by an amazing phenomenon. I met a rich man from the Urals, Andrei Simanovsky. He started his business alone, from scratch. Then, in the vicinity of Yekaterinburg, he built a huge building almost a kilometer long with a cold, ascetic facade. However, inside this building opens a continuous suite of rooms, each of which is beautiful and rich in comparison with the imperial palaces and the Kremlin chambers.
These halls, unlike one another, are decorated with marble, malachite, and expensive stones. Crystal chandeliers shine like sun. Here gilding is like on temple domes. In these halls, under their precious arches, thousands of young energetic young men and women work.
Sitting at computers, they monitor the state of the markets, the movement of goods, the rise and fall in prices, the emergence of new production centers and the extinction of the former. These young equipped people striving for excellence, for career growth, know the value of their skills and their capabilities.
Andrey Simanovsky, creating these magnificent halls, created a repository of labor, sought to ensure that the work of people took place not in dull close rooms, not in gray Puritan interiors, but in the temple, in the palace. And by this work is elevated, spiritualized, transformed into a sacred act, work again becomes a delightful divine work. Here, every morning, thousands of young people rise from their seats and perform the anthem of Russia.
The Urals is a parade of state-building factories. These plants will someday be crowned with the Order of Labor, which will take its place on the facades next to the Soviet Orders of the Red Banner of Labor. Labor is a measure of justice. Labor must be rewarded and paid. In the 1990s, the workers did not receive wages for half a year and worked free of charge in order to save the factories, save their jobs, to continue the works imputed to them, for which they should receive a decent, fair reward.
In the Russian state, which grows, overcoming a host of troubles, his exalted place of honor will be returned to work. And again "the top of the world will be work."
Who are they, Mukhinsky "Worker and Kolkhoz Woman", taking off from the pedestal into the sky? These are Adam and Eve, who return to paradise after having completed thousands of years of work and work on which today's humanity stands.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.