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DOI: 10.46698/VNC.2025.97.58.016

“AN INDISCRIMINATE CULTURAL ACTOR”: CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN G.V. BAEV AND B.P. BAITUGANOV (1934–1938)

Darchieva, Svetlana V.
Izvestia SOIGSI. 2025. Issue 58 (97). P.169-197.
Abstract:

This article focuses on personal sources of unofficial origin, known as epistolary documentation. Like memoirs and diaries, epistolary sources are valuable to researchers primarily because they allow them to reconstruct the spiritual and emotional climate of the era under study and to imagine how those who observed or experienced them perceived certain events. The letters of Georgy Vasilyevich Baev were chosen as the subject of this study for a reason. One of the most prominent representatives of the Ossetian intelligentsia, he witnessed and directly participated in significant events in Russian history at the beginning of the 20th century. Statesmen and intellectuals, enlightened officials and scientists, publishers, writers, economists, and revolutionaries maintained close and friendly relations with Georgy Vasilyevich. His life was rich in encounters, many of which are reflected in Baev’s letters. Baev maintained an extensive correspondence; his archive contains numerous letters from a wide variety of correspondents, including such a prominent figure in the Ossetian émigré community as Boris Pavlovich Baituganov. The surviving letters date from March 1934 to January 1938, when both were in exile: Baev in Berlin, Baituganov in Warsaw. Baev’s letters are imbued with personal recollections of his experiences and his work for his native Ossetia and the Terek region. Georgy Vasilyevich focuses on issues of Russian and national culture and literature, writing about the Ossetian intelligentsia, the need for mandatory study of the Ossetian language, the formation of a unified literary language, and a school education system in the native language. Moreover, in each letter, Baev writes about Kosta Khetagurov, whom he considers a friend, brother, good comrade, like-minded person, “a remarkable genius”, “our star”. Overall, the published correspondence between Baev and Baituganov contains a wealth of interesting information, allowing us to recreate the atmosphere in the émigré community and the problems of the “first wave” refugees.

Keywords: G.V. Baev, B.A. Baituganov, K.L. Khetagurov, V.Ya. Üxküll, Berlin, “Iron fandyr” (“The Ossetiam Lira”), correspondence, emigration.
Language:: Russian Download the full text  
For citation:: Darchieva, S.V. “An indiscriminate cultural actor”: correspondence between G.V. Baev
and B.P. Baituganov (1934-1938) // Izvestiya SOIGSI. 2025. Iss. 58 (97). Pp. 169-197. (in Russian).
DOI 10.46698/VNC.2025.97.58.016
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