The Malachite Box nuggets. The story of the brothers is continued in "The Snake Trail" (alternative translation: "The Serpent's Trail"), published in 1939. In this "skaz", a young the factory worker Stepan meets the legendary Mistress of the Copper Mountain. He passes her tests and is rewarded by a malachite casket filled with jewellery for his betrothed, Nastyona. Stepan dies, leaving the Malachite Casket to his widow Nastyona. Their daughter Tanyushka likes to play with it. With black hair and green eyes, Tanyushka does not look like her mother at all, as if she was born to different parents. When she grows up,
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