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 Today in Moscow there is a memorial for Alexandra Yakovlevna Shoigu, whose life has been connected with Tuva and its people for many years. She will be buried at Troyekurovskoye Cemetery next to her husband - Kuzhuget Sergeyevich Shoigu. Many representatives of Tuvan diaspora will be participating in the ceremony, including members of Sergei Shoigu's party and family friends. The head of Tuva, Sholban Kara-ool has been supporting Sergei Kuzhugetovich at this difficult time. Alexandra Yakovlevna Shoigu, born Kudryavtseva, is one of the Russian women, whose fate in the last century was full of difficulties and deprivation, who survived the terrible years of the Great patriotic War and the hard period of post-war disorder.
They worked equal with the men, at the same time never forgetting to fulfill their sacred obligations as mothers and keepers of the home hearth. Alexandra Yakovlevna was born in 1924 in a village near from Orla; soon after the family moved to Ukraine to Kadievka, now Stakhanov, in Luganskaya region. The years of the Great Patriotic War remained a terrible memory for her, with the fascist occupation. In order to avoid being transported to Germany as forced labor, the young girl spent long months hiding in the attic. Disaster struck when the Soviet army was already liberating Donbass; during an attempt to barter things for bread, Alexandra Yakovlevna was arrested with her friends and kept behind barbed wire. Only a brave escape and help of the locals who hid the girls, saved them from certain death.
In 1951 Alexandra Yakovlevna finished Kharkov agricultural institute and was assigned to work in Tuva, about which she knew practically nothing. But that country, so distant and so exotic at first, with time became her second home. This is where Alexandra Yakovlevna found her destiny, and met the man with whom she lived happily for many long years, and raised remarkable children. Working as the chief zoo- technologist of the agricultural administration of Dzun-Khemchik district in Chadan, she met Kuzhuget Shoigu, editor of the district newspaper.
The young family left Chadan, first to go to Shagonar, and later, in 1957, to the capital of the republic. In Kyzyl Alexandra Yakovlevna worked for long years at the Ministry of Agriculture; she left in 1979 for well deserved retirement from the position of the chief of the planning division. Alexandra Yakovlevna Shoigu brought a large contribution to the economic development of the republic; she was an active public activist. Her conscientious work was rewarded with many awards, including the order "Insignia of Honor", the honorable title of "Merited worker of agriculture of Republic Tuva".
She was elected as a delegate to the Supreme Soviet of Tuvinian ASSR. Alexandra Yakovlevna's husband Kuzhuget Sergeyevich Shoigu, worked at first in kyzyl as an editor of the republic newspaper "Shin", later as the secretary of regional KPSS. Because the head of family was always so busy, often was sent on working trips, all the decisions about daily life, care of raising the children, were put, chiefly, on the shoulders of Alexandra Yakovlevna. Together with everybody else, the wife of the regional party secretary stood in lines for bread, because of the shortages prevalent in the country during the last years of Khrushchev era.
 Regardless of all the complications, the Shoigu family was always ruled by advice and love, with mutual respect for everybody. Without pressure by parental authority, without suppressing the feelings of individuality, Alexandra Yakovlevna and Kuzhuget Sergeyevich brought up their children by personal example. The Shoigu's apartment on the Red Partisan Street in Kyzyl was always open to guests, adults and children. To welcome and feed whoever showed up was a good family tradition. The guests especially prized the pirogi made by the lady of the house. Such pirogi, in the opinion of neighbors and friends, were not made by anybody else anywhere.
The international Shoigu family stood for many years as an example of love and fidelity to people of Kyzyl, with respectful attitude to family values. This fidelity to family values, the protection of blood and spiritual relationships, the inviolability of family ties were inculcated by Alexandra Yakovlevna to her children as well. Living in Moscow over the past years, she remained the center of attraction for a large family to the very end, living in the interests of her children and grandchildren, doing much towards keeping the bright memory of Kuzhuget Sergeyevich Shoigu, who left this life in December of 2010.
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