HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE OF COOPERATION OF MORDOVIAN ETNOGRAPHER M. MARKELOV AND RUSSIAN ARTISTS I. AND N. YEFIMOV DURING THE PERIOD OF STALIN'S TERROR
The paper describes the history of friendship between the scientist M.T. Markelov and the artists I.S. Yefimov and N.Ya. Simonovich-Yefimov. M.T. Markelov was born in Mordovia in a family of an uneducated peasant. He graduated from a university and became a famous scientist in the field of ethnography of the peoples of the Ural and the Volga region. His scientific activity was broken when he was falsely accused and arrested. After the exile to Siberia the scientist was executed by shooting. He invited the famous artists the Yefimov who were also cultural workers in the field of Puppet Theater, teachers and authors of articles and books, to form the museum expositions, take part in the ethnographic expeditions, depict the cultural traditions of little-studied nations. The source of the research is the friends' letters. They were written in the period from 1929 to 1937. The theme is urgent because it opens new pages of life of creative intelligentsia in Soviet Russia in the period of Stalin's repressions. The fates of the letters' authors are very important from the point of view of understanding of cultural process in difficult times and the solution of problems of creativity. The article helps to restore the importance of the personalities of the artists and the killed scientist. The activity of M. Markelov during the exile is covered for the first time.