The Malachite Box them are keepers of hidden underground riches. The Mistress, described as either a beautiful green-eyed woman in malachite gown or a lizard with the crown on her head, is the keeper of gemstones. Poloz is the master of every existing piece of gold. The miners believed that if a gold-bearing lode disappeared, it meant that the Great Snake moved it to a different place. Bazhov introduced numerous daughters of Poloz, including Golden Hair from the tale of the same name. The relationship between Poloz and the Mistress is unclear. Bazhov commented that he asked some story-tellers about it, but they
The Malachite Box to other issues, such as beauty and ugliness, life and death, order and chaos, eroticism, the relationship of people with nature and the Mountain, the mysterious in general, the place of the person in the world. Lidiya Slobozhaninova summarizes that some parts of "The Malachite Box" "become outdated, but others gain new meaning". The stories from the collection inspired numerous adaptations, including films, radio and stage adaptations. The Soviet poet Demyan Bedny was so impressed with the tales that he decided to adapt them into poetry. He began the work on 27 June 1939 and adapted the 14 original stories