Bondar, Larisa D. , Tsutsiev, Aslan A.
Kavkaz Forum. 2023. Issue 16.

Abstract:
The works in the Nuzal Chapel in the summer of 1946 marked the beginning
of the creative union and friendship of two researchers-ossetologists Ksenia
Akimovna Berladina (1894-1960) and Evgenia Georgievna Pchelina (1895-1972),
between whom an intensive correspondence began in the same year, 1946, which
lasted until the death of K.A. Berladina in July 1960. The letters have been preserved
mainly in the St. Petersburg branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of
Sciences (SPbF ARAN): these are about eight dozen letters from K. A. Berladina to
E.G. Pchelina for 1946-1960. Two response letters for 1955 are also stored in the
papers of E.G. Pchelina at SPbB ARAS; there are also notes with recommendations
for the dissertation, which were kept in an envelope signed as «Letters of Pchelina
to Berladina»; two letters from 1960 are stored in the Scientific Archive of the
North Ossetian Institute of Humanities and Social Studies. One of the subjects of
the correspondence, which runs through most of the epistolaries, is the question
of the fresco painting of the Nuzal Chapel (about the image of a horseman on
the north wall, about the face of the Virgin and Christ), about the ethnicity of the
artist. K.A. Berladina repeatedly refers to the opinion of D.P. Gordeev, who denied,
contrary to the conviction of E.G. Pchelina, the possibility of burial in the chapel
of David Soslan. Another topic that was actively discussed was the publication
of a collection dedicated to the Nuzal monument, the authors of which were
to be E.G. Pchelina, K.A. Berladina and T.B. Mamukaev, with the involvement of
B. V. Skitsky. The work on the preparation of the collection was actually headed by
K. A. Berladina, but the realization of this idea was never destined to take place.

Keywords: K.A. Berladina, E.G. Pchelina, Nuzal Chapel, T.B. Mamukaev, D.P. Gordeev, correspondence.

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