#urals

Снежное величие Таганая. Фотограф Татьяна Бирюкова. Россия (Челябинск). The snowy grandeur of Taganay. Photographer Tatyana Biryukova. Russia (Chelyabinsk).

The Malachite Casket:

Folklore, Power, and the Magic of the Urals 

Pavel Bazhov (1879–1950) is best known for his collection of Ural tales, The Malachite Casket — stories that feel like folklore, but are deeply shaped by the historical and political world in which they were written. 

Born in the Ural region, Bazhov wrote about miners, craftsmen, and workers whose lives were tied to the natural wealth of the land — stones, metals, and hidden resources beneath the mountains. His characters are not nobles or heroes, but ordinary people: serfs, freed serfs, and laborers. Their everyday reality, however, is never entirely ordinary. It is always intertwined with something otherworldly. 

At the center of these stories stands one of the most memorable figures of Soviet-era folklore — the Mistress of the Copper Mountain. Beautiful, powerful, and unpredictable, she rules over the underground world of minerals. She can reward skill, honesty, and devotion — or punish greed and disobedience. She is not simply a magical figure, but something closer to the spirit of the land itself. 

Bazhov’s work appeared at a very specific moment. In the 1930s, the Soviet state actively encouraged interest in history, folklore, and the lives of ordinary people. Writers were urged to turn to folklore as a foundation for literature. Collecting stories, recording traditions, and transforming them into new narratives became part of a broader cultural project. 

But Bazhov’s tales are not simple celebrations of folk life. 

They are darker. 

Written during a period marked by personal loss and political terror, the stories carry a sense of tension, fear, and instability. Beneath the beauty of gemstones and mountain landscapes, there is something unsettling — a world where power is invisible, rules are unclear, and fate depends on forces beyond human control. 

This atmosphere is captured visually here in the illustrations by Soviet artist Oleg Korovin (1915-2002). Working in the mid-twentieth century, Korovin brought Bazhov’s world to life with images that emphasize both its beauty and its strangeness — the shimmer of stone, the depth of shadows, and the quiet presence of something watching from beneath the surface. 

Our copy of The Malachite Casket, published in Moscow by the Soviet Foreign Languages Publishing House in the 1950s with an English translation by Eve Manning, was also part of a larger effort to present Soviet culture to the outside world. But what it presents is not only folklore — it is a layered vision of labor, nature, and power. 

These stories speak in the language of myth.  But what they describe feels very real. 

-- Kate, Special Collections Graduate Art History Fieldworker

Guberlin Mountains, Orenburg Oblast

Recreated from Reddit.