Iranian group of the Indo-European language family. The three major ethnic and linguistic subdivisions of the Osetins are the Taullag, Iron, and Digor groups. The territories they inhabit straddle the primary land routes across the central Great Caucasus mountain range.
Their remote origins can be traced to Iranian-speaking warrior and pastoralist groups such as the Scythians and Alans. Byzantine, Armenian, and Georgian sources from the seventh through thirteenth centuries suggest that the Alans became a major power in the central Caucasus, and linguistic and ethnographic evidence links the modern Os-etins to the Alans. In the tenth century the Alans often allied with the Byzantine Empire. Over the next two centuries Christian missionaries gained wide influence among the Alans. In the upper Kuban, Teberda, Urup, and Zelenchuk river valleys many churches and monasteries were constructed. By the twelfth century Kypchaks became the main power in the region, and the Alans were eclipsed by their Turkic neighbors. During the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century Alans took refuge high in the mountains and abandoned their centers in the territory of modern-day Karachaevo-Cherkessia. At some point before the mid-sixteenth century, the Osetins came under the domination of princes in Kabarda.
As Russian influence in the central Caucasus began to grow in the mid-eighteenth century, Os-etin elders sought political alliances and trade ties with the imperial government. In 1774 negotiations between an Osetian delegation and the imperial government recognized the incorporation of Osetia into the Russian empire. In subsequent decades imperial authorities facilitated the relocation of loyal Osetins from the mountains to settlements and forts in the plains between Vladikavkaz and Mozdok. Beginning in the second half of the eighteenth century Russian Orthodox missionaries worked to revitalize Christianity among the Osetins, who had remained nominally Christian but practiced a combination of pagan and Christian rituals. The construction of military road networks through Osetia in the nineteenth century facilitated the economic development of the central Caucasus and the extension of Russian rule to Georgia and Chechnya. During the Russian Revolution and civil war, both Red and White armies vied for control of Vladikavkaz, the main political and economic center of the region. A South Osetian autonomous region was established in 1922 within the Georgian Soviet Republic, and a North Osetian autonomous region was established in 1924 within the boundaries of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Although their territories were occupied by German forces during the World War II, the Osetins were considered reliable by the Soviet regime and, with the exception of some Muslim Digors, they avoided deportation to Central Asia. During the Gorbachev period Osetins began to pressure for unification of the two autonomous republics into a single entity. In 1991 attempts by Georgian authorities to suppress local autonomy led to a war between Georgian and South Osetian militias. In 1992 conflicts also broke out in the suburbs of Vladikavkaz between Osetin and Ingush groups. While Northern Osetia became a republic of the Russian Federation and renamed itself Ala-nia in the 1990s, the precise juridical status of Southern Osetia within Georgia remained unresolved.
Traditionally Osetins residing in the mountains subsisted on stock-raising, and Osetins inhabiting the plains pursued agriculture. In the late nineteenth century many Osetins began to migrate to cities in search of employment, and by the last decades of the twentieth century the majority of Osetins lived in urban areas. In the twentieth century the Osetin population grew from 250,000 to more than 600,000. An Osetin literary language based upon the Iron dialect was developed during the imperial period, and Osetins were one of the few groups in the North Caucasus to possess a standardized literary language and to have developed literature in their native tongue before the revolution. See also: CAUCASUS; GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Wixman, Ronald. (1980). Language Aspects of Ethnic Patterns and Processes in the North Caucasus. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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(d. 1604), noblewoman, local saint of Murom.
Yulianya Osorina is known through the Life [or Tale] of Yulianya Lazarevskaya, a remarkable document of the seventeenth century. Written by the saint’s son Druzhina Osorin in the 1620s or 1630s, it stands out among vitae (lives of saints) in that it is tied to precise historical time and events. Most striking is its subject: an ordinary laywoman, the only Russian saint who was not a martyr, ruler, or nun.
Yulianya was born into a family of the upper ranks of the service nobility. Her father, Ustin Nedyurev, was a cellarer of Ivan IV; her mother was Stefanida Lukina from Murom. Orphaned at the age of six, Yulianya was brought up by female relatives and proved to be a serious, obedient, and God-loving child. At the age of sixteen she was married to the wealthy servitor Georgy Osorin. The Life throws some light on the wide scope of duties expected of a noblewoman of that time. Osorina’s parents-in-law passed on to her the supervision of all household affairs; in the frequent absence of her husband she ran the estate and managed family affairs: for instance, giving an adequate burial and commemoration to her mother- and father-in-law. The Life shows no trace of the alleged seclusion that has been usually postulated for Muscovite women of some status.
Yulianya began helping widows and orphans in her youth and continued the commitment after marriage. During her widowhood she intensified the charity work, giving away all but the most basic material necessities. Having donated all her belongings in the years of the terrible famine (1601-1603), she died in poverty on January 2, 1604.
The genre of the Life has been disputed widely. In 1871 Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky was the first to describe it as a secular biography. The Soviet scholar Mikhail Osipovich Skripil shared this view and chose for his 1948 edition the title Tale of Ulianya Osorina, abolishing traditional headings such as Life of Yulianya Lazarevskaya. On the other hand, Western scholars T. A. Greenan and Julia Alissandratos, as well as the Russian philolologist T. R. Rudi, insist on the hagiographic character of the work. Different signs of saintliness can be found in the Life: For instance, when Yulianya died, “everyone saw around her head a golden circle just like the one that is painted around the heads of saints on icons.” When in 1615 her son was buried and her coffin opened, “they saw it was full of sweet-smelling myrrh,” which turned out to be healing. According to Greenan, the Life is firmly rooted in Russian religious tradition, especially in the popular fourteenth-century collection Iz-maragd, which emphasizes the possibility of salvation in the world, a central theme in the Life.
The Life was meant both to edify and to advance the cause of Yulianya. Though there is no indication of an official sanctification, she has been worshipped as a saint since the latter half of the seventeenth century in and around the village of Lazarevo, near Yulianya’s burial site in Murom. She is commemorated on October 15 and January 2. Her relics are preserved in the Murom City Museum. See also: HAGIOGRAPHY; RELIGION; SAINTS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Greenan, T. A. (1982). “Iulianiya Lazarevskaya.” Oxford Slavonic Papers 15:28-45. Howlett, Jana, tr. (2002). “The Tale of Uliania Osor’ina.” Available at «http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~jrh11/ uliania.html».
OSTARBEITER PROGRAM See WORLD WAR II.
The Ostromil Gospel is an eleventh-century Gospel book, and the earliest dated Slavic manuscript.
According to its postscript, the Ostromir Gospel was copied by the scribe Gregory for the governor (posadnik) of Novgorod, Ostromir, in 1056 and 1057. The manuscript contains 294 folios, and each folio is divided into two columns. Gospels or evangeliaries were books of Gospel readings arranged for use in specific church services. In the Slavic tradition they were called aprakos Gospel, which derives from the Greek for “holy day.” Because of their important function in the celebration of the liturgy, they were very frequently copied. There are two types of evan- geliaries. Short evangeliaries contain readings for all days of the cycle from Palm Sunday until Pentecost and for Saturday and Sunday for the remainder of
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