The Malachite Casket (fairy tale) Malachite Casket: Tales from the Urals" collection. In the 1950s another translation of "The Malachite Casket" was made by Eve Manning The talented miner Stepan dies, leaving his widow Nastasya (Nastyona) and their two sons and a daughter. Nastasya becomes the owner of the Malachite Casket filled with jewellery, which Stepan got from the legendary Mistress of the Copper Mountain. Only Tanyushka likes to play with the Casket, and every piece of jewellery looks good on her. With black hair and green eyes, Tanyushka does not look like her mother at all, as if she was born to different parents.
The Malachite Box such magical help is no longer necessary, because the Soviet society has righted all the wrongs of a fairy-tale reality. Tatiana Kruglova comments that there is a clear split of characters based on their social class: there are working men, most often depicted as positive characters, and their masters, shown critically or ironically. But in the pre-war stories the class criteria existed as the background only. The conflict between the characters came from the collision between poetic and pragmatical, grand and common, irrational and rational. "The Malachite Box" and its author became enormously popular. It was met with significant praise