Alexander Kunyagin went down in the history of the Soviet Union as one of the best oil workers. He was born in the Penza Province in 1905. In 1929, after completing his military service in the Red Army, he got a job with the Uralneft trust company and started his career in the oil industry. Beginning in 1931, he worked as the driller in charge of the rigs in the Ishimbay oilfields. After completing additional training for drilling foremen, he headed a drilling office of the Ishimbayneft trust company. Later, having obtained an external degree from the Chelyabinsk Mining Institute, he was appointed the deputy director of a slide drilling office in Ishimbay. Subsequently, Kunyagin served as head of a drilling team working at the Kinzebulatovsky oilfield and other sites; head of IshimbAy oilfields; and director of the Birsk drilling office.

Kunyagin was among the first to join the Stakhanovite movement, which united exceptionally productive workers who sought to surpass the required quotas. As s result, he became one of the most prominent udarniks, or shock workers, of the Soviet oil industry. In 1935, he initiated the competition for the highest rate of penetration achieved in a single shift as part of the Stakhanovite movement. Not only was he among one of the originators of this movement, but he and his drilling crew also demonstrated outstanding performance.

A drilling crew is a primary production team that brings together specialists and workers with different occupations, qualifications, and functions in order to complete the works necessary for the construction of an oil well. The nature and organization of their work depend on the goals, depth, and design of the drilling operation. The work organization and line-up of a drilling crew are largely shaped by the duration and structure of the well construction cycle. Each drilling crew is led by a drilling foreman. This position can be held by a certified specialist or, in exceptional cases, by an experienced and reliable professional who has worked in drilling for at least three years.

In 1935, it took Kunyagin’s crew just 44 days to drill an oil well, as opposed to the standard 92. The team ranked third in the competition for the best drilling crew in the Soviet Union. Furthermore, they managed to achieve high drilling rates despite the difficult natural conditions of BashkIr lands. Eventually, they hit the rate of 533 meters per machine month, while the Soviet average was 308 meters and the Ishimbay average was 207 meters. The achievements of this drilling crew inspired the growth of the Stakhanovite movement in Ishimbay, Bashkortostan, and the Soviet Union as a whole. For instance, in 1936, a number of crews competed to be the first to drill an oil well in under a month. The first to reach the mark was the crew led by T. I. Komendantov, with a 780-meter-deep well drilled in 30 days instead of the required 60. In early 1936, this same crew broke their own record, completing the construction of a derrick in 308 man-hours, or five days.