Simon Morrison notes that "in explicit contrast to the reality of mass incarceration, starvation, and execution, and similar propaganda works offer benign images of resplendent harvests and harmonious labor". The cantata opens with a sighing motif on trumpets, after which the strings play an expansive, flowing melody in C major. The choir suddenly enters, and the music picks up speed. The choir slips cheekily into distant keys now and then, but the harmonic language contains nothing too 'unorthodox' which would have been anathema to Soviet musical strictures. Faster staccato sections continue to alternate with slower flowing sections.