Russische Volksmärchen

Russische Volksmärchen is a major 19th-century collection of Russian folktales compiled by Alexander Afanasyev. The volume includes magic tales, animal stories, heroic narratives, and accounts reflecting everyday peasant life. These tales preserve elements of Slavic mythology, popular belief, and the oral storytelling tradition. Afanasyev aimed to document the narratives in their most authentic forms, maintaining linguistic and cultural features. The collection has become a foundational source for comparative folklore studies and structural analyses of folktales, significantly influencing later scholars in anthropology and literary studies.