Sozyryko Aleksandrovich Kulaev

(also, Siko Kulaev). Born January 1900; died April 1938. Soviet Osetian writer. Member of the CPSU from 1919. Son of a peasant; born in the village of Zgubiri, luzhnaia Osetiia.

Kulaev participated in the Civil War of 1918–20 in luzhnaia Osetiia and the Northern Caucasus. He graduated in 1928 from the K. A. Timiriazev Agricultural Academy in Moscow. From 1935 to 1938, Kulaev served as the people’s commissar of education in luzhnaia Osetiia. His stories, written in the 1920’s and 1930’s, recall the life of the Osetian mountain people before the October Revolution, the events of the Civil War in luzhnaia Osetiia, and the collectivization of agriculture. His novel 1905 (an extract from it was published in 1932 under the title The Tatar Osman) was never completed. Kulaev’s works were published in two volumes in Severnaia Osetiia in 1931–32.