"Russian Folk-Tales" by A. N. Afanas'ev is a collection of traditional Russian folk stories compiled during the mid-19th century. The tales gather a variety of narratives that reflect the cultural essence of Russian folklore, illustrating themes of good vs. evil, magic, and morality through the lives of both extraordinary and ordinary characters. The opening portion of the collection introduces the context of these folk-tales, detailing the collection process by early folklorists who transcribed stories from the oral traditions of the Russian peasantry. The introduction emphasizes the rich legacy of storytelling in Russia, contrasting the simple yet profound nature of these tales with those of other cultures like German fairy tales. Several stories, like “The Dun Cow” and “The Tale of the Dead,” are presented in brief snippets, showcasing characters such as a princess, her stepmother, and a clever peasant who revives the dead. Through these enchanting yet raw narratives, readers are invited into a world where reality mingles with the supernatural, echoing life’s unpredictability and moral lessons from the perspective of Russian culture

Russian Folktales (also translated as Russian Fairy Tales) is a collection of folktales in the Russian language, collected and edited in the 19th century by folklorist A. N. Afanasyev. Despite the title, these stories are not just Russian ones, but are also folk and fairy tales told by people from many eastern Slavic-speaking regions like Belarus and Ukraine.

The stories in this collection focus both on pre-Christian elements like spirits and pagan entities, and Christian elements like saints, angels, and apostles, who appear as characters in some of the stories. References to God and liturgical practices abound.

Although traditional tales like these don’t form a uniform and consistent corpus, some stock characters appear in several stories, like Koshchéy the Deathless, Iván Tsárevich, and Bába Yága.

This edition is based on the 1916 translation by Leonard A. Magnus, who curated a selection of stories from Afanasyev’s original Russian edition. The Russian edition is much larger, with over five hundred stories in total.