Natalya Romanovna Guseva (; March 21, 1914 – April 21, 2010) was a Russian ethnographer, historian, Indologist and writer. Born at a village in the Kiev Governorate, she did her Candidate of Sciences and Doctor of Sciences from the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in 1951 and 1978, respectively. She worked at the Institute of Ethnography from 1952 until her retirement in 1998, however from 1963 to 1964, she had worked at the House of Soviet Culture in Delhi. She died at the age of nearly 96 years. Early life and family Guseva was born as Natalya Romanovna Chetyrkina on 21 March 1914 at Rubezhovka village in the Kiev Governorate. She was orphaned at an early age. After her schooling, she worked in a tire factory and simultaneously studied in a technical school for rubber industry. She first married V. N. Gusev, an engineer, and later married Svyatoslav Igorevich Potabenko who was also an Indologist. Education, career and research Guseva developed interest in the eastern world, and in 1940, completed her graduation from the Leningrad State University with a specialty in Indology. Later, she worked at the Institute of Ethnography in Moscow as an employee, but in 1946, she joined the institute as a student for further studies. From 1950 to 1952, she worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR. In 1951, she came to Moscow and completed her Kandidat Nauk at the Institute of Ethnography with the defense of her thesis titled "Этнический состав населения Южной Индии" (The Ethnic Composition of the Population of South India). Later in 1952, she left Uzbekistan and on the invitation of Sergey Pavlovich Tolstov, she started working again at the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union where she worked until her retirement in 1998. However, from 1963 to 1964, she had worked as the senior methodologist of the Russian language at the House of Soviet Culture in Delhi. In 1978, she completed her Doctor of Sciences at the institute with the defense of her thesis titled "Индуизм: история формирования. Культовая практика" (Hinduism: The History of Formation. Cultic Practice). Sergei Aleksandrovich Tokarev evaluated Guseva's dissertation for the Doctor of Sciences and its defense by her. He rated her dissertation as "dilettantish", but viewed her defense of it as