The Malachite Box or The Malachite Casket () is a book of fairy tales (skazka) and folk tales (also known as skaz) of the Ural region of Russia compiled by Pavel Bazhov and published from 1936 to 1945. It is written in contemporary language and blends elements of everyday life with fantastic characters. It was awarded the Stalin prize in 1942. Bazhov's stories are based on the oral lore of the miners and gold prospectors.
The first edition of The Malachite Box was published on 28 January 1939. It consisted of 14 stories and an introduction, which contained some information about the life, industry and culture of the Urals and which the author tried to include into every edition of the collection. Later versions contained more than 40 stories. Not all stories are equally popular nowadays. The most popular tales were written between 1936 and 1939: "The Mistress of the Copper Mountain" and its continuation "The Malachite Casket", "The Stone Flower" and its continuation "The Master Craftsman", "Silver Hoof", "Cat's Ears", "Sinyushka's Well", "The Manager's Boot-Soles". Among the later stories, "A Fragile Twig" (1940), "The Fire-Fairy" (1940), "Tayutka's Mirror" (1941), "Ivanko Krylatko" (1943), "That Spark of Life" (1943) are popular. The characters of the Ural Mountains folklore such as the Mistress of the Copper Mountain became very well known after their appearance in Pavel Bazhov's The Malachite Box.
Background In the 1930s the Communist Party of the Soviet Union greatly encouraged the interest in the past of the country and the people. The Party paid a lot of attention to the development of the historical science. Maxim Gorky initiated the publication of such books as The History of Factories and Plants (). The initiative was supported by the Communist Party. History books and various historical fiction titles were published one after another.Batin 1983, p. 1. General interest in the history of the country transformed into the interest in folk art and folklore. The famous folklore expert Nikolay Andreyev later wrote about that period that the folklore collections "have never been published before in such quantities, not even in the "Golden Age" of the folkloristics in the 60s". Journalists, students, and members of Komsomol started collecting folklore.Blazhes 2003, p. 6. At the First Congress of Soviet Writers Maxim Gorky reminded the writers that "the art of words begins with folklore" and encouraged them to collect and study it. It was supposed to be used as a model example of the literature.
Overview Pavel Bazhov was born in the Urals. He knew its geography, topography, natural resources, and was very proud of both the beauty of the Urals and its people. He stated that his main reason for writing was to suppress the pain after the loss of his only son Alexey in 1935. Mark Lipovetsky believed the tense situation in the author's life could partially explain the depth and the sombre tone of his early tales,Lipovetsky 2014, p. 215. which made them so popular among the adult readers. He suggested that the tales carried the sign of deep terror and trauma, which Bazhov endured between January 1937 and 1938, and noted that The Malachite Box "is filled with unprecedented for Soviet (and especially children's) literature horror". At that time Bazhov was fired from Sverdlovsk Publishing House, where he had worked since 1931, and expelled from the Communist Party for "glorification of people's enemies" in his recent book. His past as a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and a seminary teacher was also questionable.Lipovetsky 2014, p. 214. He was once summoned for interrogation by NKVD, but luckily his investigator was arrested the day before the meeting. The author was reinstated in the Communist Party in 1938. Nevertheless, a lot of the stories were written between January 1937 and 1938. Bazhov later said: "It happened to be such a black stripe that I was at loose ends. So I started to work on some old ideas." During the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) Bazhov switched to the patriotic tales, the task that he considered his duty as the patriot. The distinctive feature of the later stories is the strengthening of the social motive, such as confrontation based on social class, and the decrease in poetic and supernatural scenarios.
The tales are told from the point of view of the imaginary Grandpa Slyshko (; lit. "Old Man Listenhere").Balina 2005, p. 115. Slyshko is the old miner from a factory who remembered the Serfdom era. In the stories written at the end of the Great Patriotic War and in the post-war years, Bazhov introduced the new narrator. His new stories were told by a different type of the miner: the patriotic participant of the Russian Civil War who fought for the Red Army and later helped to build the new socialist society.
The tales can be divided into several groups: the series about craftsmen (the most famous tales are "The Stone Flower", "The Master Craftsman", "A Fragile Twig"); the tales about some mysterious forces, which contain surreal plots and mythical creatures ("The Mistress of the Copper Mountain", "The Malachite Casket", "Sinyushka's Well", "Cat's Ears"); the satirical tales about gold prospectors or greedy bailiffs ("The Manager's Boot-Soles", "Sochen and His Stones"); the tales about mine explorers ("Sinyushka's Well"). During the Great Patriotic War and in the post-war years, Bazhov started writing about Soviet armourers, steel-makers, and teemers, emphasizing the patriotic pride of the Russian workers. He also penned some stories about the Russian communist leaders, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. Furthermore, Pavel Bazhov indicated that his stories can be divided into two groups based on tone: "child-toned" (e.g. "The Fire-Fairy", "Silver Hoof"), and "adult-toned" ("The Stone Flower", "Marko's Hill").Bazhov 1952 (1), p. 246. Denis Zherdev divided the stories into "gold" and "malachite" series, which begin with "Beloved Name" and "The Mistress of the Copper Mountain" respectively.
Publication In the mid-1930s Sverdlovsk Publishing House decided to publish the collection Prerevolutionary Folklore of the Urals (). In the summer of 1934 the folklorist Vladimir Biryukov was offered to make such a collection. The historian Andrey Ladeyshchikov became its chief editor.Blazhes 2003, p. 7. From August to December 1935 Biryukov collected folklore at the Ural Mountains. He was supposed to finish the book by January 1935, however, it was not completed on February. Biryukov wrote in the diary that "the classification, introduction, and the bibliography" were needed. Several sections of the collection were not yet ready as well. Biryukov mostly worked on songs, folk riddles, and fairy tales.Batin 1983, p. 2.
On 25 February 1935 Biryukov met with Yelizaveta Blinova, the new chief editor of Prerevolutionary Folklore of the Urals appointed instead of Andrey Ladeyshchikov. She insisted on including the folklore of the working class, although Biryukov claimed that it would be impossible to find. Blinova consulted with journalists, ethnographers, and writers (including Pavel Bazhov) and asked them to write down some workers' folklore. She added their stories to the collection. Blinova's initiative inspired Bazhov to start working on his stories.Blazhes 2003, p. 8. Bazhov, who was an employee of the same publishing house since 1931, suggested that she include some stories that he had heard at the Polevskoy Copper Smelting Plant from the miners' storyteller Vasily Hmelinin (), nicknamed "Grandpa Slyshko" by children (slysh-ka literally means "Listen here!"). Bazhov later wrote about Blinova:
She raised a question: why were there no workers' folklore? Vladimir Pavlovich [Biryukov] replied that he had not been able to find it anywhere. I was dismayed: how can that be true? I've heard this workers' folklore in abundance, I've heard the whole skazy. And I brought to her "Beloved Name" as an example.
Pavel Bazhov had heard the skaz from Vasily Hmelinin in 1892–1895, and wrote it down from memory,Blazhes 2003, p. 9. trying to use the miners' natural language where possible, as he was always fascinated with miners' colloquialisms. His prerevolutionary records, which consisted of six notebooks, were lost during the Russian Civil War. Bazhov introduced Vasily Hmelinin in the stories as the narrator Grandpa Slyshko.
In July 1936 Blinova left Sverdlovsk Publishing House. Bazhov became the chief editor, only to be replaced by Ladeyshchikov again. The collection was eventually published under Ladeyshchikov's name in December 1936. There were three of Bazhov's stories in it: "Beloved Name", "The Great Snake", and "The Mistress of the Copper Mountain". Prior to the publication, the Detgiz employee Vladimir Lebedev saw his manuscript. He was very impressed by it, and published four stories ("Beloved Name", "The Great Snake", "The Mistress of the Copper Mountain", and "The Manager's Boot-Soles") in the 11th issue of the Krasnaya Nov literary magazine (1936).
Inspired by the success of the tales, Bazhov continued working on them. The tales "Sinyushka's Well", "Silver Hoof", and "The Demidov Caftans" were finished even before the publication of the first The Malachite Box edition.Batin 1983, p. 8. By 1938 the author finished 14 stories. Because of Bazhov's tense relationship with the Communist Party, they were published under two different pen names, either under the name "P. Bragin" or simply under his initials "P. B.". The name of Vasily Hmelinin was usually in the title as well.
The first edition of The Malachite Box was released in several versions. The first copy was presented to the author for his 60th birthday on 28 January 1939. Several test copies were published in January. A special deluxe edition, decorated with malachite, was sent to the 1939 New York World's Fair. The mass market edition published in autumn of the same year. The book was an instant success. It has been republished many times. Overall, twenty three editions of the stories were released from 1941 to 1945. The second edition of the collection was released by the Moscow publishing house Sovetsky Pisatel in 1942. The book was awarded the Stalin prize. The third edition of The Malachite Box was released by Goslitizdat in 1944; the fourth by Sverdlovsk Publishing House in 1944; the fifth edition by Sovetsky Pisatel in 1947; the sixth by Goslitizdat in 1948; the seventh by Sverdlovsk Publishing House in 1949. The eighth was the last edition of The Malachite Box to be published during Bazhov's lifetime in 1950. In 1950 his decaying eyesight made the writing difficult. The last story "Zhabrei's Path" was published after his death. According to the All-Union Book Chamber's data as of 1 January 1981, the books in the Soviet Union were republished 253 times with a total circulation of about 37 million copies. The Malachite Box has been republished many times since then.
Translations
The tales were translated into 64 languages, more than 250 editions in foreign languages were released. The list of languages include English, Hungarian, Italian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Mongolian, Chinese, Japanese, Assamese, Kannada. Four stories from The Malachite Box were published in the 1943 Moscow magazine Internatsionalnaya Literatura in English and French. In 1944 the book was translated from Russian into English by Alan Moray Williams and published by Hutchinson. Bazhov did not know about this translation and found out about it accidentally. In the early 1940s "The Mistress of the Copper Mountain" and "The Stone Flower" were translated into Italian. Bazhov mentioned that he had heard about it from "either folklorist or translator Lesnaya". In the letter as of 25 February 1945 he wrote: