Malachite Box: Ural Tales

Pavel Petrovich Bazhov's tales had a talented co-author — the illiterate old guard of the Polevsky plant, a witty and cheerful man named Vasily Alekseevich Khmelinin. Adults gave him two nicknames — Stakanчик (Cup) and Protcha, to which he responded. For children, including the future writer, he was “Grandfather Slyshko”; the kids would run to the guardhouse on Dumna Mountain to listen to tales about the girl Azovka and Poloz, Serpent Mountain and Danila the craftsman, about treasure-seeking signs, about various land riches… The old man told stories as if he had seen and heard everything himself. When places visible from the mountain were mentioned, he would point to them with his hand. However, if asked to tell a tale, he would say: “But these are not tales, but called sказы and vобывальщины. Some things, you see, cannot be told to everyone. One must be cautious...”

Half a century later, P. Bazhov brilliantly recreated the vобывальщины of the factory guard — by the markers that memory preserved: the essence of the tale, style, individual names, expressions. Knowledge of the history of the region, proximity to his native dialect, and the writer's life path, which passed through the same places where Grandfather Slyshko lived and composed his tales, helped.

This collection contains most of the famous Ural tales by Pavel Bazhov. Illustrations were made in the 1940s by artist Vasily Bayuskin.