The fate of the Ossetian intelligentsia: Elena Barakova

The report examines the life and activities of the first female prosecutor Elena Barakova-Kaloeva, wife of the repressed writer Georgiy Fadeevich Barakov, who died during the years of repression. The regional prosecutor E.E. Barakova “for participation in an anti-Soviet nationalist organization” was arrested and exiled to the Gulag for 5 years because of slanderous denunciations. After serving her sentence, E.E. Barakova took up pedagogical activity. Shortly before her arrest, E.E. Barakova-ethnographer, being an employee of the Museum of Local History, was together with the famous archaeologist E.G. Pchelina in an archaeological expedition in Alagirsky district with the task to conduct archaeological work on Alanian crypt structures. This article introduces into scientific turnover the most valuable ethnographic material collected during the same expedition by Elena Evstafievna Barakova: girls’ and women’s songs, drawings of dances by Elena Ikaeva; as well as her own ethnographic notes on the Alagirsky Gorge. The analysis of the material we found in the North-Ossetian Institute of Humanitarian and Social Studies Scientific Archive deserves research within the framework of legal, historical and pedagogical directions.