Verkehrte Welt? Kirchenslavisch als Vorbild beim ersten ossetischen Druck (1798)

The spread of Christian faith among the pagans (or muslims) in medieval Rus’ and in the Russian Empire was tightly connected with the problem of literacy. Besides the creation of a totally new alphabet for the converted, as in the case of Stephen fo Perm’ (second half of the 14th century), there were attempts to adapt the Cyrillic alphabet to unwritten languages in order to acculturate to Russian civilization various peoples living at the fringe of the expanding Empire. In this article, one of those experiments, carried out in the North Caucasus, is discussed, namely the choice of the Church Slavonic alphabet for the first printed book in Ossetic language (1798). The text, a catechism written in Russian and Church Slavonic languages with a parallel Ossetic translation, is introduced by a short Church Slavonic primer, which goes back, through different textual stages, to the famous Azbuka of Ivan Fëdorov. This bilingual catechism deserves special attention not only from a linguistic point of view, but also as an interesting model for dissemination of Russian Orthodox culture and religious traditions among non-Slavic peoples.