Biragova, Bela M.
Kavkaz Forum. 2023. Issue 16.

Abstract:
The year 2023 in the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania was declared the Year
of the Ossetian “Nartiada”. The honoring of the Narts epos as a key component
of the national culture of Ossetians at the state level was carried out for the first
time and became a landmark event in the cultural and political life of the region.
According to the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania,
during the Year of the Ossetian “Nartiada” more than 50 events of various types
were implemented, covering all regions of the republic. The actualization of
national culture in regional political communication is connected, on the one
hand, with the all-Russian “conservative-protective” trend of politicization and
mediatization of historical and cultural heritage as the basis of state sovereignty
and “civilizational choice” in conditions of foreign political instability, on the other
hand, with the dynamically growing interest of society to the “roots”, to ethnic
culture, ethnocultural brands and ethnocultural tourism. The construction of
social and political reality based on traditional values, national cultural heritage,
and the “politics of memory” is especially relevant in political communication in
the national republics of the North Caucasus as a culturally complex society, a
“frontier society,” where, despite the dynamic pace of modernization, traditional
basis retains its influence on various spheres of social life. The Narts epos is
the mental code of the Ossetian people, the conceptual sphere of their ethnic
self-awareness, substantiating the Indo-Iranian origin of the ethnos and the
Scythian-Sarmatian-Alan-Ossetian continuity. The conceptosphere of the Narts
epos as a sign system is thus a resource for regional symbolic politics and the
construction of national meanings. The article, within the framework of political-
anthropological, communicative and cultural-semiotic approaches, as well as
the theory of symbolic politics (M. Edelman, P. Bourdieu, O. Malinova), presents a
political scientific analysis of the Narts epos as an instrument of symbolic politics.

Keywords: the Year of the Ossetian Nartiada, Republic North Ossetia-Alania, the Narts epos, national cultural development, symbolic politics.

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