Malachite Box

Few of Soviet writers managed to become truly popular with the first book. With Pavel Petrovich Bazhov (1879-1950) it happened. It was not the Stalinist prize (although he received it) and not the post of writership in the Urals, but the Malachite Casket itself - heard, thoughtful, masterfully processed "secret tales", ancient oral traditions of the Ural miners, and not the post of writers. The book immediately became a holistic mythology, a literary monument of that "mining civilization", which modern authors re -open today. But the monument itself gives many reasons for a deeper and more close reading. Its main part was written from January 1937 to the beginning of 1938, in the midst of a large terror, when Bazhov was dismissed from the service and excluded from the party for the glorification of the enemies of the people. Researcher Mark Lipovetsky believes that as a result, in a “malachite casket” with its Gothic, sinister color, an imprint of terror and fear ”was involuntarily sewn, which sharply distinguishes it“ among the jubilant optimism of Soviet children"s literature ”. Who knows how much more is hidden in this old mine ...

The accompanying article by Andrei Korovin

Andrey Yuryevich Korovin (born 1971) - poet, prose writer, head of cultural projects. He graduated from the highest literary courses at the Literary Institute. A. M. Gorky. The author of eight poetic books. Poems are published in poetic anthologies, magazines "Arion", "Friendship of Peoples", "New World", "October" and other publications, translated into ten languages ​​of the world. The head of the international cultural project "Voloshinsky September", a literary salon in the Museum-Theater "Bulgakovsky House" (Moscow), curator of the poetic program of the Tsvetaevsky Festival of Poetry in the city of Aleksandrov (Vladimir region) and other cultural projects