In the film, Magnitogorsk and the poem, “I Do Not Look for Harmony in Nature,” there is a strong tension between nature and industrialization. In the film, this first presents itself in the creation of the labor-camp type developments at Magnitogorsk mining and smelting ore. In these camps, especially for those of persecuted kulaks, the new environment in the empty steppe is much harsher than they are accustomed to and this causes lots of sickness and death. Later in the film, a female scientist describes the perils of child rearing in this environment, polluted as it is by the ore smelting. In addition to lack of funds, which contributes to poor nutrition, she fears that the air and toxicity of the environment would negatively impact the life of any children she has. Because of this, she voices her decision to not have children at all. Thus, in this film, the environmental damage is interpreted through threats to human health.

In Zabolotsky’s “I Do Not Look for Harmony in Nature,” his description of the surrounding world conveys hopelessness and lifelessness, “It is a world of sleep and unreason / The heart hears no concordant music / in the obstinate chanting of the wind” (Zabolotsky, 177). The environment and nature surrounding the speaker lacks soulfulness and cheer. Readers quickly find the reason: industrialization. Limiting the “wild freedom” of nature, “glittering turbines…electric power, human construction” lays at the base of this lifelessness, even as Russia moves towards a more technologically advanced society. That is, as we heard in Professor Breyfogle’s talk on electric power in the middle of nowhere and the factories and industries that rose around it. Yet Zabolotsky presents industrialization as something antithetical to harmony within nature.