Draft:Zoya Igumnova

Zoya Petrovna Igumnova (née: Kuznetsova) (21 February 1903 – 30 October 1988) was a Soviet historian and school teacher, she was acting Dean of the MSU Faculty of History from 1936–1937. She was also the wife of Vasily Kuznetsov, who acted three times as Head of State of the Soviet Union.

Biography
She was born to a poor family on 21 February 1903 in the village of Poretsky District Chuvashia during the Russian Empire. Her childhood life was not speculated, she graduated from the Poretsk Teachers' Seminary.

Pedagogical activity
For several years she worked in her specialty in the Tatar ASSR. She worked as an orphanage teacher in Moscow. She graduated from the Workers' faculty of the Academy of Communist Education named after Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya.

In 1926, she married Vasily Kuznetsov and she moved to Makeevka, where her husband was sent to the Makeevka Metallurgical Plant.

In 1931, she was an associate professor and worked as deputy dean for academic affairs of the biological and historical faculties at Moscow State University. She was acting dean of the history department from June 1936 to June 1937.

She participated with her husband at the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1934.

During World War II, she worked as the director of the Poretsk secondary school. In the post-war years, she taught the history of the CPSU at the MSU Faculty of Geography. According to her former students, that she “was very accessible in communication” and “democratic in communicating with her students. . She called critical students “opportunists”. In 1972, she came from China to attend the centenary of the Poretsk Teachers' Seminary. In 1979 she taught History of the CPSU at Moscow State University. In the 1980s, her health was deteriorating and she retired.

Death
In June 1986, her husband, Vasily Kuznetsov, resigned as First Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and relieved all of his duties. She and her husband lived in Moscow with their children, she died in 30 October 1988 at the age of 85. She was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

Personal life
She lived with Vasily Kuznetsov, First Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and her 4 children. She had two daughters and two sons; Era (1928–2018), Elena (1939–2016), Valery (born 1934) and Alexander (1946–2020). In 1953–1961, she lived with her husband and her children in the House on the Embankment.