«River» of Yelena Safonova

Elena Safonova presents the river as a symbol of human progress in her 1930 picture book. Its course carries the reader from villages and wooden bridges to steamships, railways, power stations, and apartment blocks, and finally flows into the open sea. Here, the river becomes a force of nature that humanity has managed to tame and put to its own use, portraying humans as rulers of nature, reshaping landscapes, and mastering rivers, seas, and oceans.