In Moscow Zoya and Alexander enrolled in school No. 201, which now bears their name. Zoya's favorite subject in school was literature. Her teachers noted her essays for deep understanding of the subject and for imagery. Zoya read far beyond the curriculum. The list of authors she read includes Tolstoy, Pushkin, Lermontov, Karamzin, Zhukovsky, Byron, Molière, Cervantes, Dickens, Göte, and Shakespear. Zoya kept a notebook where she recorded her thoughts about the books she read. Such as this "In Shakespear's tragedies the death of a hero is always accompanied by a triumph of a high moral cause." She liked Beethoven's Egmont and did often sing Klärchen's song "The drumms are resounding." Her favorite music was Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5.

Her striving for high ideals lead to misunderstandings with her classmates. On the eve of 1939 the girls wrote each other notes with New Year wishes. Zoya received the following note "Zoyinka¹, don't judge people so strict. Don't take everything so close to heart. Know that most people are egoist, flatterers, are insincere and you can't depend on them. You should leave their words without attention. Such is my New Year wish." After reading the note Zoya said "If one thinks of people like that, then what one has to live for?"

In October 1941, still a high school student, she volunteered for a partisan unit. To her mother, who tried to talk her from doing this, she answered "What can I do when the enemy is so close? Would they come here I would not be able to continue living." Zoya was assigned to the special unit 9903. Out of a thousand people who joined the unit in October 1941 only a half had survived the war. In mid-November 1941 her partisan unit crossed the front line. They mined roads and cut communication lines. On November 27, 1941 Zoya received an assignment to burn the village of Petrischevo, where a German cavalry regiment was stationed. She did not return.

¹Zoyinka is a dimunitive form of Zoya.

Source:
Lyubov Kosmodemyanskaya, The story of Zoya and Shura (in Russian) English translation of the book is available from Greeklish.org.

Further reading: More info about Zoya (in English) is available from Greeklish.org.