| Summary: | When the Western Siberia oil and gas fields made their appearance on the world map in the 1960s, the event was hailed as the discovery of the century. However, to develop the enormous hydrocarbon reserves, just in the northern part of Tyumen oblast, in the taiga, bogs, and tundra, it was necessary to develop an almost unpopulated area four times the size of France. It was necessary to construct not only field facilities but also thousands of kilometers of pipelines, roads, and power lines—in other words, everything that is called production infrastructure. In addition, cities and settlements with comfortable housing had to be erected in an empty place. It is no exaggeration to call the implementation of projects of such unprecedented scope, and in an extraordinarily short time, the feat of the century. And the considerable weight of leadership in accomplishing this feat was shouldered by Gennady Pavlovich Bogomyakov, who was, at that time, the first secretary of the Tyumen Oblast Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. EKO presents a journalistic version of G.P. Bogomyakov's memoirs.
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