December 2020 marks the centenary of the birth of Nina Stepanovna Kinyapina, a prominent Soviet and Russian historian, an authoritative higher education teacher, honorary professor of Moscow State University. She is the founder of a school for the study of the history of Imperial Russian foreign policy, Russian policy in the East and outlying ethnic regions of the empire - the Caucasus and Central Asia. The article commemorates N.S. Kinyapina, her academic heritage and the school based at the faculty of history, Lomonosov Moscow State University. Her entire academic career path and pedagogical activity at Moscow University are traced, starting from the first day within its walls and up to receiving the title of Honorary Professor. The author briefly considers her theses, as well as the major milestones of her research work. The article pays particular attention to the N.S. Kinyapina's choice of research topics and directions and analyzes her major works, and most importantly, her views on key issues of the selected research problems, assessment of various political figures and their activities both within the empire and in the field of foreign policy, as well as an interpretation of the nuances of border management in the 19th - early 20th centuries. The article reflects the reaction of the Russian academic community to Kinyapina's research and involves some reviews. All well-known representatives of her scientific school are listed, first of all those of her students who made a significant contribution to the development of Soviet and Russian historical research. Many of her foreign students, especially from the Balkans and the Transcaucasus, are also mentioned. By giving concrete examples, the author traces continuity in professional specialization, and enumerates all modern scholarly works written in recent decades by the different generations of representatives of the school. The article draws on the fragments from the personal memoirs of the older generation of Professor N.S. Kinyapina's students and creates a more complete and multidimensional view of her personality.