Preserving
the Soul
of a Cultural Heritage

Across the vast forests, steppes, and river valleys of the Slavic world, oral storytelling has long served as a conduit for communal memory, moral instruction, and artistic imagination. While countless villagers, peasants, and wandering minstrels kept these narratives alive through generations, it was the work of a handful of dedicated collectors in the 19th and early 20th centuries that rescued many of these tales from oblivion and transformed them into the literary canon we know today. Among the most influential figures are Pavel Bazhov, Alexander Afanasyev, Ivan Krylov, Vladimir Dahl, and Nikolai Gogol. Their efforts not only preserved the raw material of Slavic folklore but also shaped the way scholars and artists worldwide perceive the mythic landscape of Eastern Europe.