[3][4] In 1941 after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Ganiyeva volunteered to join and Red Army and served in the 3rd Moscow Communist Rifle Division.

[10][11] In addition to serving as a sniper she work as a radio operator on reconnaissance missions, and crossed into enemy territory 16 times during the winter of 1941.

During the battle she and several of her fellow snipers organized fire on a group of enemy soldiers retreating after being attacked by a tank platoon.

[4] However, she soon was badly wounded by shrapnel from an explosion and her friends Nina Solovey, Fyodor Kirillov, and Yakov Kolyako carried her to a hospital.

[17] An appeal written by her addressed to mothers of the Caucuses calling on them to support the war effort was published in issue No.19-20 of the magazine Rabotnitsa in 1942.

[4] From 1955 to 1956 she headed the Department of Language and Literature of the Baku Higher Party School, and in 1956 she became a researcher at Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.