North Ossetia celebrates 210 years of the first Ossetian book

Yesterday, on May 23, the National Scientific Library situated in Vladikavkaz hosted a conference dedicated to the 210th anniversary of the first printed Ossetian book. In the cause of the event, a film about book-printing named "Creation of the Book" was shown to the audience.

The first Ossetian book entitled "Elementary Education of Person Willing to Learn Divine Books" was published in May 1798 in Moscow at the Synod Printing House with a circulation of about 1000 copies. It was translated into the Ossetian language by two educators-churchmen of Ossetia - archimandrite Gaioz and priest Pavel Gentsaurov, who had earlier also compiled the first Ossetian ABC book.

The conference at the Library presented unique materials and reports on the first Ossetian book, prepared by professors of the North-Ossetian University and the Vaso Abaev Institute of Social and Humanitarian Studies.

According to the historian and regional ethnographer Taimuraz Pliev, until now, the viewpoints of the North and South Ossetian intellectuals on the appearance of the first Ossetian book differ. In the North, everyone asserts that the book was published in the Moscow Synod Printing House in 1798, while in the South people are sure that it appeared in Tbilisi in 1820s.