Arsen Kotsoev

Born Jan. 3 (15), 1872, in Gizel’, in present-day Prigorodnyi Raion, Severnaia Osetiia ASSR; died Feb. 4, 1944, in Ordzhonikidze. Soviet Ossetian writer. A founder of the national prose literature.

Kotsoev was born to a poor peasant family. He worked as a teacher but was removed from his post for spreading atheistic propaganda among the students. In 1895 he began publishing his works in the Russian newspapers of Vladikavkaz. In 1912 his stories “They Had Their Dreams” and “Comrade” were published in the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda. The difficult life of the Ossetian peasants was the principal theme of Kotsoev’s prerevolutionary stories. The novella Dzhanaspi (1940) shows the acute class struggle and the victory of the collective farm system; Kotsoev created characters who represented the new man among Ossetian villagers. A. S. Pushkin’s tales were published in Kotsoev’s translation.