Arbuzova Natalia Nikolaevna

Arbuzova Natalia Nikolaevna – an ethnographer, museum worker, and local historian. Natalia Nikolaevna was born in 1901 in Vyatka, into the family of a doctor. She attended a gymnasium, then Leningrad University, graduating from the ethnographic department of the Faculty of Geography. Her mentors included A. A. Spitsyn, D. K. Zelenin, and other prominent scholars.

 

She worked as a teacher in the Altai, visited Bukhara; from 1938 she became an employee of the Kirov Regional Museum of Local Lore, and from 1942 — of the Urzhum Museum. For more than 30 years, despite adverse conditions, she carried out local history work in Urzhum. During the first 12 years of its existence the museum was relocated six times. In 1954 it was closed. But in 1967 Arbuzova reopened it as a people's museum. Her articles and notes, including on the history of Urzhum, were published in local periodicals. Arbuzova Natalia Nikolaevna died on August 1, 1979 in Urzhum.