Examining the work animals present in “The Cow” and Cossacks of the Kuban can reveal many conceptualizations of the interaction with humans and nature at this period of Soviet rule under Stalin. In “The Cow,” the young Vasya and his father treat the cows as primarily work animals, valued for such actions, “He liked everything about the cow…her large, thin body which was the way it was because, instead of saving her strength for herself in fat and meat, the cow gave it all away in milk and work” (247-48). His father too appreciates the calf for the services rendered, asking rhetorically, “What do we want with a bull calf?” and thereby expressing his disdain for a male animal that is too young to work and can’t produce milk and therefore is best put to use as a source of meat and income (254). Of course, the animal is such the perfect worker that Platonov chooses it to represent the ideal of a communist worker, but the idea that even a cow could fill this role of labor and proffering more than it keeps for itself (and then being torn apart emotionally and then literally because of these sacrifices) suggests that Platonov and/or the Soviet regime view people as not that far off from animals and a source of pure labor above all else.

Similarly, in Cossacks of the Kuban, the main work animals are horses, bred both for racing and transport. The contrast in the beginning of the film between the horses and the oxen, the latter of which pulling a load of humans and watermelons and thus plodding along slowly but surely, emphasizes the difference between the beasts of pleasure and those of labor. The oxen are like the hardened peasants, used to a life of hard work, unlike the galloping horses that compete in races and carry the single individuals of prominence in their seemingly flighty, yet elegant ways.

The horse, the ox and the cow are both animals that have been domesticated through many years of labor on the human’s side and the result is a blending of these work animals and the working humans that employ them. I’d like to talk more about the cow’s death and the symbolism there of it dying on the railroad tracks, hit by a train and the symbolism of the horse race as the pinnacle of the drama of the two love stories, but I’m not 100% sure of my ideas (and what exactly they are) and would rather discuss them in class instead.