The elaborate film, shot by more than ten cameramen in all corners of the Soviet Union, was immediately praised for its lyrical qualities and described as a monumental poem about the earth, a grandiose song and a symphony of facts. Soviet hardliners, on the other hand, pointed to ideological shortcomings due to the relative absence of the working class and an emphasis on ethnography at the expense of industry. However, the film's central thesis is that the surplus production of simple local goods is necessary in order to acquire heavy machinery abroad, including ‘machines that make machines’. In this way, even remote peoples on the margins of Soviet society can participate in the construction and modernisation of the Soviet economy. This geographical mobility is reflected in Vertov's use of cross-fades and split screens, techniques that he would radicalise in ‘The Man with the Movie Camera’ (1929), his undisputed masterpiece.