In 1915 and 1916, she served as assistant to Aleksandra Ekster at Alexander Tairov's Chamber Theater in Moscow. After the October Revolution in Russia the so-called "Lenin plan of monumental propaganda" was adopted. Sculptors received state orders to make city monuments. Mukhina in 1918 completed the project of the monument dedicated to the educator and publicist Nikolay Ivanovich Novikov. The project was approved by Narkompros, but the model of the monument made of clay and stored in an unheated workshop got cracked, and the project remained unfulfilled. Within the framework of monumental propaganda Mukhina created sketches of the sculptures "Liberated labor" and "Revolution" (1919) as well as monuments to Vladimir Mikhailovich Zakorskiy (1921) and Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov (also known as "The Flame of the Revolution", 1923).