Feoktista Ivanovna Zaboeva

Feoktista Ivanovna Zaboeva (1850–1943) was a Russian teacher, folklorist and translator who worked among her Komi people. She collected Zyryan language fairy tales, riddles, proverbs and songs, which were later preserved and published.

Biography Feoktista Ivanovna was born 28 November 1850 in Ust-Sysolsk (now Syktyvkar, Russia), to a merchant family whose parents were famous Komi-Zyryans. Her father, Ivan Nazarovich, was well known to city residents as he maintained a postal station, performed elective free services while working in the city administration and held honorary positions there. For a long time, Ivan Nazarovich was an assistant to the city mayor, Mikhail Nikolaevich Latkin, and then he became the mayor of Ust-Sysolsk. As mayor, his family hosted many officials who came from Vologda, Veliky Ustyug, Arkhangelsk, St. Petersburg and other cities, and some visitors lived in his house for a long time.

Her mother, Anna Stepanovna Lytkina, was the sister of the Komi language researcher Georgy Lytkin. Feoktista Ivanovna, the fifth of 12 children, graduated from the Ust-Sysolsk parish school, the women's secondary school (1868–1872), and then the teachers' courses in Sovdor in 1872. In 1872, Feoktista Ivanovna passed the exams and earned the title of rural teacher. She began teaching at the boys' school in the village of Vylgort and taught there for 26 years. Kallistrat Zhakov and Vasily Nalimov were among her students.

Translator Feoktista Ivanovna was actively involved in many educational activities. She translated textbooks into the Komi language, sought to facilitate the education of Komi children, translated Russian fairy tales, poems, stories, songs for extracurricular reading, and translated some texts from the Bible and the Gospel into the Komi language. In 1900, she translated the book "The Beginnings of Christian Doctrine" from Russian into Komi-Zyryan.

Final years After she retired in 1912, Feoktista Ivanovna continued to advise her former students, help them financially and remain a sensitive listener to the children, although she lived in a very difficult financial situation. In 1912, in connection with her retirement, she was assigned a "pension in the amount of 751 rubles 9 kopecks," but even that small amount was suspended in 1918 after the October Revolution.

She spent her last years in poverty yet she lived many more years. She died in the summer of 1943 at the age of 93 and was buried at the Vylgort Cemetery.

Honors In 1914 she was awarded a gold medal "For Diligence." In connection with her forty years of teaching, the Ust-Sysolsk zemstvo assembly hung her portrait in the school in Vylgort.