Moscow is big, and everything in Moscow is big, the spaces are daunting, many of the streets seem a mile wide (this is Prospekt Mira). Some of them are too wide to cross so they have pedestrian tunnels underneath. You might want to walk over to that building and see what it is, but it would take all day! The man and woman on the pedestal are holding a hammer and sickle (enlarge). In fact, this is a famous statue from the 1937 World's Fair known as Kolkhoznitsa (Worker and Collective Farm Woman, Рабо́чий и колхо́зница) [images] but I don't know if this is the real one or a replica. And I still haven't figured out what the building in the background is; on the right it says MOSCOW and on the left, the part that is not obscured by the tree says RLIN. It might be a train station?

Source: Wikimedia Commons. Click to enlarge.

Update, January 2013... From Ivan Potapov: “this ‘Worker and Kolkhoz Woman’ or ‘Kolkhoznitsa’ statue is not a replica. It's a genuine statue by Mukhina. The monument was created for the USSR's pavilion at 1937 World's Fair in Paris. It was later moved to Moscow and placed near the Northern entrance to VDNKh (Exhibition of the Achievements of the National Economy at the time you visited Moscow, now it's All-Russia Exhibition Centre). The pavilion on the left is definitely not a ‘train station’, that's a pavilion at VDNKh called ‘Moscow’. Initially it was Soviet pavilion at another successful World's Fair - Expo 67 in Montreal but later it was dismantled and relocated to Moscow. And there's a photo taken when the pavilion was still in Québec” [at left].

Kolkhoznitsa today stands atop an imposing new structure: