In a photo from the museum collection, the driver Ilya Kozhura poses against the background of a stone with the inscription ‘We will conquer you, Yenisei! ’ The picture was taken in 1975 when the whole country was watching the works of the Soviet builders of the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station on the Yenisei River. Initially, the damming of the river was scheduled for October 15. However, the management decided to do this four days earlier. At that time, all printed publications vied with each other to inform the public of the importance of those days: ‘Being four days ahead can solve the problems of accelerating the construction of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP, ’ the engineer Nikolai Rozanov said in an interview. 

As a result, the command to block the Yenisei was given on October 11 at 10 a.m. The first dumping truck with stones was driven by Ilya Kozhura, who was depicted in the photo from the museum collection. The guest of honor of the construction, cosmonaut Georgy Beregovoy was next to him in the vehicle cabin. 

A few years earlier, in September 1968, Ilya Kozhura had also been driving a truck, from which the first stone had fallen into the Yenisei. And now he again had the honor of the first dump. Work had to be done quickly: trucks constantly replaced each other, more and more stones fell into the water. It took only three hours for the workers to tame the river. This was an important step towards the construction of a new energy center of the country — the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station. 

The secretary of the board of the Writers Union of the USSR Sergey Sartakov telegraphed: 

Previously, taiga covered the site of the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station. But in the autumn of 1961, a team from the ‘Lengidroproekt’ institute under the leadership of Peter Erashov came to the small village of Maina to explore the area. Freezing temperatures, absence of roads, and remoteness from big cities did not prevent them from studying the river and choosing a place where a new hydroelectric power station was subsequently built. The preparatory stage of the construction started in 1963 with the construction of roads, housing for builders, and other infrastructure facilities. The work on the construction of the hydroelectric power station itself began on September 12, 1968. The chief organization responsible for the construction of the hydroelectric complex became ‘Krasnoyarskgesstroy’. The construction of a dam on such a scale was unprecedented in the world. The Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP began producing electricity in December 1978.