Born on January 31, 1926 in the village of Bakaly, Bakalinsky district of Bashkiria in a peasant family. Graduated from 8 classes. He worked in a collective farm village. Member of the CPSU (b) / CPSU since 1944. He joined the ranks of the Red Army voluntarily in December 1942, having changed his year of birth in his passport from 1926 to 1925. On October 24, 1943, in a battle near the city of Krivoy Rog (Ukraine), he was wounded and hospitalized. After that he was sent to a reserve regiment, and then was appointed a gunner of an 82-mm mortar in one of the regiments of the 15th Guards Rifle Division. Later he became the commander of the crew. In late January - early February 1944, in the battles for the villages of Malo-Sofievka and Novo-Sergievka (Dnepropetrovsk region of Ukraine), he destroyed 15 Nazis and 5 soldiers from a machine gun with mortar fire. For this fight he received the first award - the medal "For Military Merit". At the end of February 1944, a mortar crew, in which Zotov was the gunner, crossed the Ingulets River together with the infantry. For this fight he received an award - a medal "For Courage". On April 6, 1944, in a battle three kilometers north of the village of Razdelnaya in the Odessa region of Ukraine, Sergeant Zotov, commanding the guards, exterminated over ten enemy soldiers and one officer from a mortar. In the summer of 1944, the 5th Guards Army was transferred from the 2nd Ukrainian Front to the 1st Ukrainian Front, whose troops were attacking in the Lvov, Rava-Russky and Stanislavsky directions. During the offensive, they liberated the city of Lvov, crossed the San River and entered Polish territory. On August 21, Sergeant Zotov, commanding a mortar crew, suppressed two enemy firing points, destroyed up to 20 Nazis. Was awarded the Order of the Red Star. In the period from 24 to 27 January 1945, in the battles to expand the bridgehead on the left bank of the Oder River, north of the German city of Oppeln, now the Polish town of Opole, the mortar crew of the 47th Guards Rifle Regiment under the command of Guard Sergeant Zotov destroyed anti-aircraft weapons and two machine guns ... For the battle he received an award - the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd degree. In 1947 he graduated from the Ivanovo military-political school. In the rank of lieutenant he served in the group of Soviet forces in Germany. In May 1951, he was transferred to a military unit located in the city of Kaliningrad, where he was elected secretary of the regiment's party bureau, and then appointed deputy political officer of the Yuri Smirnov battalion. In October 1956 he was transferred to the reserve. He returned to his homeland in Bashkiria. Since November 1960 - director of a school in the town of Oktyabrsky. In 1964 he graduated by correspondence from the Bashkir State University named after the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution. In 1980 he moved to the city of Ufa. He worked as the director of school number 46 of the Leninsky district. He was awarded the title "Honored Teacher of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic". Died July 16, 1996. He was buried in Ufa at the Yuzhny cemetery.