The author of the article is focused on the life and work of the prominent Soviet specialist in African Studies — Irina Yastrebova (1910—1995). Her primary area of research interests was South African economy. She began her academic career in the1930s, when the Cominter was functioning. However, a truly scientific study of Africa was made possible in the USSR by the Institute for African Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, foundedin October 1959. Yastrebova worked at the Institute as Deputy Director and Head of Southern African Studies section. Irina Yastrebova is remembered by grateful colleagues as a person of highest moral standards and scientific integrity ready to help the unjustly persecuted.