Facets of personality: Aleksey Ardasenov

The article focuses on the scientific activities of Aleksey Ardasenov. The author gives an overview of archival sources, on the basis of which the life and works of the outstanding person who fought for the rights, culture and freedom of his compatriots for many years is traced. The relevance of the research topic is determined by the need for a conceptual understanding of the history of transforming societies and the role of the intelligentsia in this process, as well as the insufficient level of knowledge of the processes of integration of Ossetians into the Russian cultural space. Aleksey Gavrilovich (Alikhan Gubievich) Ardasenov, born in 1852, graduated from the Vladikavkaz Mountain School in 1867, entered the Moscow Agricultural School, from which he graduated in 1870 with a diploma of the first degree. Archival documents and memoirs testify that he possessed excellent abilities. In 1870 he entered the St. Petersburg Forestry Institute, where in 1874 he passed the final exams in the Agronomic Department. The influence of the progressive ideas of Russian literature on Ossetian students paved the way for their perception in the 1870s of ideas of Russian populism. Some of them already took part in the activities of secret populist organizations while receiving higher education. Being an active revolutionary, Ardasenov was arrested in Moscow in April 1876 and thrown into prison, where he spent almost three years. In 1879 Ardasenov was exiled to one of the regions of Yakutia to live under police supervision. In 1885 he returned to Ossetia, from there he moved to Tiflis. In January 1895, he was invited to the post of manager of the Borjomi estate. Here he compiled a herbarium of the flora of the upland strip of Western Transcaucasia, which he brought as a gift to the famous Professor Albov; some of the plants were first discovered by Ardasenov. Studying the upland-meadow vegetation of the Adzhar-Imereti Range, Ardasenov discovered 108 plants, one of which - H. Ardasenowii R. Kell. et Alb - is named after him. Working in the mentioned regions of the Transcaucasus, he saw a wide promotion of agronomic knowledge, the establishment of demonstration fields and fruit nurseries throughout the country, and, mainly, the spread of herbage. Ardasenov's personality and his place in the revolutionary movement and the scientific and cultural life of North Ossetia deserve special work to extract archival materials from his case and collect the literary and scientific heritage in the places where he worked.