In the 1940s, Nikolay Zhilin, a prominent representative of Socialist Realism, created many portraits of famous Komi residents. The portraits were commissioned by the government, and all their characters, including war heroes, shock workers, and award winners, were approved by a special commission. One of the first images in this series was the portrait of Ivan Kosolapkin, a drilling foreman from Ukhta. He came to Chibyu as a member of the first 1929 expedition that established oil production in the area.

Ivan Kosolapkin was born in Bykovka, a village in Penza Governorate, in 1875. At the age of 30, he began working at Grozny oil fields and worked his way up from an unskilled laborer to a drilling foreman. Ivan Kosolapkin participated in three wars — the Russo-Japanese War, the First World War, and the Russian Civil War. He was wounded several times. Ivan Kosolapkin was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor of the RSFSR for his contribution to restoring the oil industry in the Northern Caucasus.

At the age of 54, Ivan Kosolapkin was sent to the Russian North, to the Ukhta River, where oil exploration and production was to be established. He was responsible for gathering and shipping the necessary equipment to Arkhangelsk. Dozens of railroad cars with drilling rigs, pumps, steam engines, pipes, and tools were dispatched from Grozny within two months. The expedition consisting of prisoners was transported with the help of steamships, barges, boats, and sometimes even barge haulers.

Kosolapkin supervised oil well construction in freezing temperatures of 30 to 40°C below zero. The first four wells did not produce oil, and only a year later the first oil was obtained from a depth of 400 meters, proving that there were large oil reserves. That is how the first oil field was discovered in the European North — the Chibyu Oil Field.

Ivan Kosolapkin trained a whole generation of drilling masters. In 1932, a plane of the Ukhta-Pechora Labor Camp was named after him, and a year later, he was awarded a gold watch with an engraving that reads “To Comrade Ivan Kosolapkin, a faithful Bolshevik, from the Gulag Unified State Political Administration”.

In 1936, Ivan Kosolapkin became one of the first workers to receive the badge “Ukhta Shock Worker”. Having arrived in Komi, the worker assumed that his visit would not last long, but he eventually stayed there until the end of his life. He died in 1950, seven years after this portrait was painted.