Anyone traveling on the Moscow Metro can see how the worker was viewed in Soviet times. Their faces stare out from the mosaics, jaws set and chins raised, expressions serene but determined. The figures stand upright, muscles taut, arms and hands full of the tools or products of their labor, with pickaxes or hoes, with overflowing baskets of fruit and grain. The picture is one of strength and nobility, exactly the image the Communist Party wanted to encourage. The dream of Communism was to build a workers' paradise, one in which all jobs had dignity and all citizens who could work did so to the best of their ability, with enthusiasm and love for their fellow workers and the Communist Party.

As sociologist Timo Piirainen puts it:

The worker was a Promethean hero who was liberated from his fetters by the Soviet power, and...