The story of the Snow Maiden: how Ostrovsky’s heroine differs from Father Frost’s granddaughter

Ostrovsky’s Snegurochka is the daughter of Frost and Spring the Fair in his 1873 play. She longs to learn how to love and perishes in the sun’s rays. The festive Snegurochka is Ded Moroz’s granddaughter and his helper at New Year celebrations. These roles emerged at different times: this family relationship already appeared in literature in the early 20th century, while the character became part of the principal Soviet children’s celebration in 1937.

Folk tales about a girl made of snow, Ostrovsky’s ‘spring fairy tale’ and scripts for New Year celebrations help trace Snegurochka’s history. Comparing these sources explains why the familiar name brings together characters with different family relationships and different roles.

What was Snegurochka like before Ostrovsky’s play?

In folk tales, Snegurochka is a girl made of snow who comes to life, usually becoming the child of an elderly, childless couple. The story has no single fixed ending. The Kizhi Museum Reserve describes versions in which the girl gets lost in the forest, meets a dangerous stranger, or dies and comes back to life; in one well-known version, she melts after jumping over a bonfire. Claiming that the folk tale always ends with her melting therefore oversimplifies the material.

Comparing the versions reveals another unexpected detail. In the stories retold by the museum, warmth sometimes helps the snow doll come to life rather than destroying her: the elderly couple leave the snow in a stove or on a sunlit windowsill. This motif sits uneasily with the simple claim that any warmth is always dangerous to the heroine. The playwright took a recognisable figure and built a world of his own around her. The differences between the recorded versions are set out in the Kizhi Museum’s article.

The folklorist Alexander Afanasyev examined tales about the girl made of snow in ‘The Poetic Views of the Slavs on Nature’. The scholar Elena Dushechkina links Ostrovsky’s idea to this work, while also tracing other literary versions from the 19th century. The playwright therefore did not ‘invent Snegurochka’; his contribution was a new parentage, a dramatic conflict and a heroine whose choice matters more than the miracle of her emergence from snow.

Why one folk tale cannot fully explain the character

The heroine has no single ‘authentic’ life story in folklore. In some recorded versions, an elderly couple shape a girl out of snow; in others, what matters is her ordeal in the forest, rather than how she came into being. The Kizhi Museum cites a version in which jealous friends kill Snegurochka, but a singing reed found by her parents helps bring her back to life. In another story, animals rescue her. Focusing only on the bonfire story leaves these endings unexplained. Such a selection is acceptable when retelling one version, but insufficient for discussing the character’s history.

Even her arrival in the world is described in different ways. In the versions by Vladimir Dahl and Ivan Khudyakov presented by the museum, warmth plays a part in the girl’s birth: snow is left on a windowsill or put in a stove. A later reader who remembers the heroine melting in the heat may see a contradiction here. Such differences are natural in folklore: the tales need not share a consistent set of physical laws or a single chronology. Ostrovsky, by contrast, made the threat of the sun’s warmth a recurring condition throughout his play.

Elena Dushechkina writes that Afanasyev analysed versions of the tale in the second volume of ‘The Poetic Views of the Slavs on Nature’, and dates the volume to 1867. In the Presidential Library catalogue this edition is dated 1868. There had also been a literary treatment before the play: Grigory Danilevsky published ‘Snegurka’ in 1860. Ostrovsky was working within an existing tradition, although the daughter of Frost and Spring he created became a distinct character in her own right. These dates rule out crediting the playwright with the snow girl’s first appearance in print.

The claim that Snegurochka was an ‘ancient goddess’ also requires caution. The Kizhi Museum discusses possible distant similarities with seasonal rituals, but explicitly notes that the heroine has no known direct ritual predecessor. Shared features between two figures — disappearance in spring or an association with a bonfire — do not in themselves establish an unbroken line of descent. The verifiable chain traced in this article begins with recorded folk tales and literary works of the 19th century.

Who are Snegurochka’s parents in Ostrovsky’s play?

In Ostrovsky’s ‘The Snow Maiden’, her parents are explicitly named: Frost and Spring the Fair. In the opening scenes, her mother speaks of her daughter, while her father discusses whom to entrust with her care. The author described the work’s genre as a ‘spring fairy tale’ and set it in the imaginary land of the Berendeys: the prologue takes place in early spring, and the final act in Yarilo’s Valley on the threshold of summer. The play’s locations are named in the author’s introduction, while the transition to summer is described in the fourth act.

The character’s name in the cast list can mislead readers. ‘Ded’, meaning ‘grandfather’, does not mean that Snegurochka is his granddaughter here: Spring and Frost call her their daughter. In this play, the heroine’s father personifies the cold, lives in a forest mansion and fears both the sun god Yarilo and human love. He does not lead New Year celebrations or bring presents to children. His parenthood is established by the characters’ dialogue, rather than by the resemblance of his name to that of the later festive figure.

Snegurochka wants to leave the forest and join the Berendeys above all for human companionship: she is drawn to the shepherd Lel’s songs, games and friendships with other girls. Frost fears that love will lead to his daughter’s death and agrees to let her live with Bobyl and Bobylikha. Thus, at the start of the play, the father’s concern, the mother’s wish to give the girl freedom and Snegurochka’s own decision to live among people come into conflict. This is precisely why the playwright needs these family relationships.

Why the playwright needed a foster family

Immediately after the forest prologue, Ostrovsky moves the action to Berendeyevka, a settlement across the river. Bobyl Bakula and his wife take Snegurochka in as their foster daughter, but in the first act it soon becomes clear that they hope to profit from her beauty. Bakula advises the girl to attract suitors so that they will bring gifts to the house. Snegurochka objects: she does not understand the language of romantic promises and does not want to feign affection for someone else’s prosperity. The word ‘parents’ in the play therefore also encompasses two contrasting adult attitudes towards the heroine — Frost’s care and her foster family’s self-interest.

The scene in Berendeyevka helps us understand more precisely what is meant by Snegurochka’s cold heart. She can stand up to Bobyl, works, appreciates songs and wants friendship. What she cannot experience is a particular feeling that those around her expect of a young woman. Ostrovsky shows this in her conversation with the shepherd Lel: Snegurochka is willing to reward him for a song with something to eat, but does not understand why the singer would want a kiss or a flower from her. Lel takes the flower, then throws it away when other girls appear. This small action conveys her bewilderment without abstract reflections on her ‘lack of feeling’.

The world of the play is already moving towards a summer celebration. In the first act, a herald calls on the Berendeys to dance in circles and weave wreaths at night, then greet Yarilo in the morning. In Ostrovsky’s work, these events take place within an imaginary kingdom, set in ‘prehistoric times’ according to the author’s stage direction. They cannot serve as a documentary account of a specific ritual of ancient Rus’, or be transferred to the calendar of New Year celebrations. What matters in the play is that Snegurochka wants to join the communal celebration at the very moment when the sun becomes deadly to her.

The second act takes place in Berendey’s palace, the third in a protected forest and the fourth in Yarilo’s Valley. This sequence is specified by Ostrovsky himself and changes the heroine’s situation: from forest solitude she moves to a settlement, then to the place where the tsar passes judgement, and finally to a communal gathering at sunrise. Forests and New Year trees would later appear in scripts for children’s New Year celebrations; the progression from spring to summer would remain a feature of the play. Comparing the genres begins with these concrete shifts in time and place, rather than family terms alone.

Why does Snegurochka melt in the play?

The ending is bound up with both love and sunrise. In the fourth act, Snegurochka asks Spring to give her the ability to love. Her mother warns her of the danger, but places a wreath of flowers on her head; after this, the girl feels love for the visiting merchant for the first time. When Mizgir brings her before Tsar Berendey and she openly declares her love, a ray of sunlight falls on her and she melts. This sequence unfolds in the fourth act of the play.

This ending differs from the familiar brief retelling of the tale about jumping over a bonfire. Ostrovsky’s Snegurochka does not act carelessly during a game: she understands her parents’ warning and nevertheless chooses love. The source of danger is identified from the outset. In the prologue, Frost fears Yarilo’s intentions, while in the final act Spring tells her daughter to hide her feelings from the sun. Her melting brings a carefully constructed drama to its conclusion, rather than being a chance accident at a celebration.

Ostrovsky does not end the play with a personal tragedy: after Snegurochka’s death, Berendey calls on the people to greet Yarilo. For the tsar, the passing of Frost’s daughter means the end of the long cold spell. For the audience, Mizgir’s words and Snegurochka’s own plea to preserve love make this ending far less serene. This coexistence of communal spring celebration and personal loss is a quality of the text that disappears when the play is turned into an origin story for Ded Moroz’s helper.

How personal feelings become a matter for the whole kingdom

The conflict surrounding the heroine affects more than just her parents. The visiting merchant Mizgir has promised to marry Kupava, but on seeing Snegurochka, he publicly rejects his former bride-to-be. In the scene before Berendey Kupava complains of the wrong done to her, and the tsar demands an explanation. He refuses to regard forced marriage as a solution: without freely given consent, such an outcome would not restore justice. In the land of the Berendey people, love becomes both a matter of personal choice and a subject for public judgement.

The tsar links the cooling of human relationships to years of cold weather and Yarila’s anger. In his speech, he says that the sun has failed to respond to the festival for fifteen years. This is a character’s belief within a fictional world, rather than evidence of actual weather or ancient beliefs. The tsar hopes that Snegurochka’s love will help the entire people; the audience, meanwhile, already knows what Frost fears. In the play, public hope and personal danger develop side by side, giving the final celebration a double meaning.

Act Three gives no grounds for simply calling Mizgir an ideal suitor. He offers Snegurochka a precious pearl in exchange for love, but she refuses to sell her feelings. Mizgir then seizes her and demands that she acknowledge him as her husband; Leshy, the forest spirit, helps her escape by confusing her pursuer with ghostly apparitions in the forest. Readers should keep this scene in mind when, after receiving Spring’s gift, Snegurochka suddenly returns his love in the finale. The change in her feelings is brought about by a magical wreath, but the earlier coercion does not disappear from the text.

The shepherd Lel offers no straightforward path to a happy ending either. He sings for Snegurochka, later chooses Kupava to accompany him before the tsar, and promises Snegurochka that he will return. She waits for him and fears Mizgir. When she asks Spring to give her love, hers is the plea of someone who sees the closeness of others and feels lonely, rather than someone simply wishing to fulfil her father’s or the tsar’s will. In Act Three her jealousy, fear and anticipation are conveyed through individual actions; the ending grows out of these scenes.

After the sunbeam strikes, Mizgir throws himself into the lake. Berendey then calls on his people to praise Yarila and speaks of the end of Frost’s rule. This ending does not erase the two deaths; it shows the price the tsar is willing to accept for his understanding of the common good. The text offers no comforting winter return for the heroine of the kind familiar from a festive character who reappears each year. To say that Ostrovsky’s Snegurochka ‘melted and returned for New Year’ would mean adding an event to the play that the dramatist never wrote.

The ambiguity of the ending allows for different interpretations on stage. In an article about Anna Matison’s 2020 production the Mariinsky Theatre contrasts Yarila’s festive victory with pity for Snegurochka and recalls the interpretation of musicologist Boris Asafyev. This is the article’s authors’ view of a particular opera production, rather than newly discovered evidence of Ostrovsky’s intentions. The comparison is useful because it does not force the reader to choose between the joy of the Berendey people and the heroine’s death, both explicitly present in the text.

How did the theatrical Snegurochka become known beyond the play?

Ostrovsky’s play was first performed in Moscow on 11 (23) May 1873 at the Bolshoi Theatre: the first date is in the Old Style calendar, the second in the New Style. Pyotr Tchaikovsky wrote the music for the production; actors, opera singers and ballet dancers worked together because the Maly Theatre building was undergoing repairs. These details are given by the St Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music. The spring premiere is a useful reminder of the season for which Ostrovsky wrote his story.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov later composed an opera based on the play. It premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre on 29 January (10 February) 1882 — in the Old and New Style calendars respectively. The theatre museum holds material from various productions, including Snegurochka’s costume, made to a design by Mikhail Vrubel for the singer Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel. The opera, stage productions and images made the heroine increasingly recognisable long before she became a regular presence at children’s New Year celebrations.

Yet popularity on stage does not prove that Ded Moroz’s granddaughter appeared immediately after the opera’s premiere. The character’s transmission can be traced through titles, songs, stage designs and children’s dramatisations; these alone cannot explain the change in her family relationship and role. Dushechkina, in her study ‘The Russian Christmas Tree: History, Mythology, Literature’ traces the intervening history of children’s literature and festive scripts. The material she cites shows that the heroine was widely known before she took on the role of hosting celebrations.

Rimsky-Korsakov read the published play as early as 1873 and was not initially drawn to it. According to the museum’s research, he returned to the story after the premiere of his ‘May Night’ in January 1880. With Ostrovsky’s permission, the composer wrote the libretto himself and was free to cut and alter the dramatic text; the opera was completed in 1881 and reached the Mariinsky Theatre stage in 1882. Almost nine years separate the Moscow production from the St Petersburg opera. The difference goes beyond the music: in one, actors speak the play with musical numbers by Tchaikovsky; in the other, the story is told through opera.

The first Moscow production was not an immediate triumph. Comparing Ostrovsky’s letters with press reviews, literary scholar Vladimir Tikhomirov notes that the 1873 production was dropped from the repertoire after nine performances. Viktor Burenin reproached the playwright for moving away from satire of everyday life; another critic, Alexander Chebyshev-Dmitriev, doubted the fairy tale’s suitability for the stage but acknowledged the significance of the experiment. These are contemporary assessments, rather than a final verdict on the work’s artistic merit. Tikhomirov’s study helps distinguish more precisely between the short life of the first production and the long life of the story.

The play returned to major stages before Snegurochka became a regular character at children’s New Year celebrations. Tikhomirov lists productions in the 1900/1901 season at Moscow’s New Theatre and Art Theatre, as well as St Petersburg’s Alexandrinsky Theatre. Meanwhile, Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera followed its own separate course. The claim that ‘the play was forgotten until the Soviet celebrations’ therefore does not stand up to scrutiny; at the same time, the existence of stage productions does not reveal what family relationship audiences at festive tree celebrations attributed to Snegurochka.

A museum object helps distinguish the theatrical tradition from the festive one. Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel’s costume was made to a design by Mikhail Vrubel for Snegurochka in the opera. The theatre museum displayed it at an exhibition in 2024 alongside Volkhova’s costume from ‘Sadko’. The beads and bugle beads on the stage costume are features of a particular piece made for a production. This object cannot establish a prescribed colour for the Soviet granddaughter’s fur coat or a single standard for her appearance.

Dushechkina’s book identifies another link between the stage and children’s culture: performances of excerpts from the play at home and at school, poems, and images of the snow girl. These forms allowed children to get to know the character without seeing the entire tragic story. A children’s festive tree celebration could adopt the familiar name and recognisable snowy image while leaving Mizgir, Tsar Berendey and the death at sunrise outside the festivities. This is how motifs are selected; it would be wrong to describe it as a faithful adaptation of the plot.

When did Snegurochka begin to be called a granddaughter?

This family relationship was mentioned long before the main Soviet New Year tree celebration. Elena Dushechkina points to ‘Snegurochka (A Winter’s Tale)’ by an author writing under the name Kuk: published in Peterburgsky Listok in 1900, the text calls Snegurochka the granddaughter of a grey-haired old man. In the passage quoted by the researcher, this character is not identified as the festive figure of Ded Moroz. The 1912 poem ‘Snegurka’s House’, by contrast, explicitly links the heroine to Ded Moroz, but calls her his daughter. The family relationship had not yet become a fixed convention in children’s literature.

At the turn of the twentieth century, different versions coexisted. Snegurochka appeared in drawings and in performances at home and at school, and figurines of her could decorate the festive tree; children knew her name from fairy tales and the theatre. But taking part in such a celebration was not yet the same as her familiar role as a host who addresses the audience alongside Ded Moroz. According to Dushechkina’s material, before the revolution Snegurochka appeared at festive tree celebrations as a character in dramatisations and decorations, gaining a role of her own beside him only later.

How her parentage changed before Soviet children’s New Year celebrations

Early literary versions offer no single account of her family relationships. Dushechkina describes an 1890 children’s publication in which the snow girl’s parents are Frost and Winter, and an 1896 collection in which Frost is again named as her father. In Ostrovsky’s play, her mother was Spring. In Kuk’s ‘A Winter’s Tale’, published on 29 October 1900, Snegurochka is addressed as the dear granddaughter of a grey-haired old man. The researcher provides the publication’s bibliographical details in her book; this offers precise evidence for dating the use of the word, but does not amount to an official declaration of a new family relationship.

In 1912, Sergei Durylin published ‘Snegurka’s House’ under the pseudonym Sergei Severny. In the poem, Ded Moroz builds the girl a house of ice and calls her his daughter. Dushechkina rightly sees this as bringing the characters together in a shared winter world, but the text of the poem itself specifies the family relationship. Earlier still, in 1893, A. Ya. Alekseyev’s play ‘Frost’s Daughter — Snegurka’, mentioned in the same study, was performed at public festivities. This means that the relationship continued to exist after the literary ‘granddaughter’ appeared in 1900: no single author ‘renamed’ the heroine once and for all.

Dushechkina cites examples from before the Revolution: toys depicting the snow maiden, children’s costumes, recitations, and dramatisations of the fairy tale and opera. Appearing at a festive tree celebration and serving as its regular host are different historical roles. This distinction helps avoid two opposing mistakes: declaring Snegurochka a purely Soviet invention, or treating the pre-revolutionary celebration as a fully formed version of the later children’s festive performance.

In its analysis of pre-war guides, the Russian State Library notes that in 1936 the heroine could still appear as a fancy-dress character. Organisers discussed who would help Ded Moroz hand out presents to the children; in one script, a female skier in a light blue outfit performed this role. The Russian State Library’s analysis does not prove that the skier was the ‘first Snegurochka’. Rather, it shows that the familiar division of roles did not emerge automatically from the old play: organisers were seeking a format for the new festive tree celebration.

What happened at Moscow’s New Year tree celebration in 1937?

In early 1937, Snegurochka appeared alongside Ded Moroz at a celebration in Moscow’s House of Unions: Dushechkina’s study and museum materials date her appearance at the main New Year tree celebration to this occasion. The Presidential Library specifies the date of the celebration itself in the Hall of Columns — 1 January 1937 — and quotes a newspaper account of Ded Moroz’s performance. The event followed Pavel Postyshev’s proposal, published on 28 December 1935, to resume holding festive tree celebrations for children.

The sources need to be handled carefully here. The extract from Pravda of 2 January 1937 quoted by the Presidential Library describes the tree celebration and Ded Moroz’s entrance, but does not name Snegurochka in this passage. Her participation in the celebration is confirmed by separate studies and museum publications, including an article by the Integratsiya Museum. The newspaper quotation therefore cannot be presented as independent evidence for every character in the performance.

Scripts written after the revival of festive tree celebrations established Snegurochka as a helper and intermediary in conversations with the young audience. In the pre-war teaching guide described by Dushechkina, nursery teachers told children in advance that Ded Moroz would arrive with his granddaughter; at the celebration, the characters inspected the tree together, called for the lights to be lit and led a dance. The change in the character’s purpose is clear from her actions: the tragic heroine, once threatened by warmth, now helps organise a joyful gathering. This is a reworking of the character for a different genre and a different audience.

Which documents clarify the date and role

The distinction between a celebration and a document published in the same year matters. The Hall of Columns welcomed children on 1 January 1937; the Pravda report quoted by the Presidential Library appeared on 2 January. Meanwhile, the catalogue describes the 1937 collection ‘Yolka’ (‘The Festive Tree’) as a second, revised edition, with sections on nursery schools, schools and the House of Unions, music, puppet theatre and making toys. The year on the collection’s title page alone does not make every page a transcript of the January performance. It documents the development of practices for organising the celebration, which can then be compared with newspaper accounts.

The Presidential Library, in its review of this guide, cites a telling incident: six children aged three to four burst into tears when Ded Moroz appeared before them with a stick and began to sing. The collection’s authors urged organisers to adapt the activities to the participants’ ages and the conditions in the hall. The episode explains why educators needed to pay attention to the hosts’ work and the order in which characters appeared. It does not document the motives of the person who first used this designation: the source provides no such information.

The family relationship is also mentioned after the 1937 celebration. The Russian State Library recounts a report in Vechernyaya Moskva dated 27 December 1938, in which Ded Moroz greets children with Snegurochka, explicitly described as his granddaughter. This report confirms that the characters performed together shortly after 1937. The sources allow us to distinguish reliably between three claims: the word appeared in literature in 1900; in 1937, the pair are associated with Moscow’s main New Year tree celebration; and the 1938 newspaper report explicitly names the family relationship. These materials do not establish an earlier, precise date for the granddaughter’s first appearance in each city.

The celebration’s institutional scale also changed. The Presidential Library notes that in 1953 the main New Year tree celebration moved from the House of Unions to the Kremlin; the Kizhi Museum describes Snegurochka’s participation in the children’s Kremlin tree celebration in 1954. These details concern the festive character’s later history, rather than the origins of her literary persona. They show how a successful performance format was repeated at new venues until, for several generations, it became a familiar way to welcome the New Year.

Which objects show that the festive character had become established?

After the pair appeared on stage, they also took material form. The Museum of Moscow reports that designs for freestanding cotton-wool figurines of Ded Moroz and Snegurochka were developed in the second half of the 1930s; these figurines were placed beneath the festive tree. The museum’s account of cotton-wool toys links their production to the revival of New Year celebrations. A decoration beneath the tree does not prove the exact date of the characters’ first performance, but it does show how the stage duo became part of the home.

The Zheleznogorsk City Museum describes its own collection of similar cotton-wool figurines from the 1950s–1980s. Craftspeople made a wire frame, moulded the face and painted the details by hand. These mid-20th-century figurines show that production continued decades after the January 1937 tree celebration.

There is also a distinction between a museum object and the commentary accompanying it. The Integratsiya Centre’s page is devoted to a greeting card from 1980; the information about Snegurochka appears in its historical commentary. This card cannot be described as depicting the heroine’s first performance at the House of Unions. When a source describes an exhibit while also briefly recounting the history of the celebration, its verifiable commentary can be used in the article, while the attribution of the object itself remains a separate matter.

Images and stage designs do not form a direct chain of copying. Zabela-Vrubel’s costume helps us understand the artistic portrayal of the opera’s heroine; a cotton-wool figurine shows how a children’s celebration was decorated at home. They can be compared in terms of function and period without claiming that the maker of a particular toy saw a particular production. Establishing such a connection would require the craftsperson’s records, a factory prototype or testimony from the organisers, none of which appears in the sources examined.

Thus, Ded Moroz’s familiar granddaughter inherited her name and some aspects of her appearance from earlier fairy-tale and theatrical versions of Snegurochka, but New Year celebrations defined her place in culture. The stage heroine belongs to a story of love and the changing seasons; her festive namesake helps host children’s New Year tree celebrations. The characters are historically connected, but their family histories and dramatic purposes are distinct.

On Okhotny Ryad, which is on the route of the ‘Journey into Christmas’ New Year tour, you can reflect on the Hall of Columns in the House of Unions: on 1 January 1937, it hosted a tree celebration that holds an important place in the history of the festive Snegurochka. The route continues through Teatralny Proyezd towards Kitay-Gorod and explores Moscow’s winter traditions; a visit inside the building itself is not listed in the programme.

Sources

1. A. N. Ostrovsky. ‘The Snow Maiden’. Prologue
2. A. N. Ostrovsky. ‘The Snow Maiden’. Act Four
3. Elena Dushechkina. ‘The Russian Christmas Tree: History, Mythology, Literature’
4. Presidential Library. Catalogue entry for the second volume of ‘The Slavs’ Poetic Views of Nature’ (1868)
5. Kizhi Museum Reserve. ‘Once a Snow Maiden — Always a Snow Maiden’
6. St Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music. ‘You Listen and Melt Away…’
7. Presidential Library. ‘Moscow Held Its First New Year Tree Celebration’
8. Integratsiya Museum and Cultural Centre. ‘New Year Greeting Card for 1981’
9. Museum of Moscow. ‘Wonders on the Christmas Tree. The History of Cotton Wool Ornaments’
10. Zheleznogorsk City Museum. ‘Ded Moroz New Year Tree Ornament’
11. A. N. Ostrovsky. ‘The Snow Maiden’. Act One
12. A. N. Ostrovsky. ‘The Snow Maiden’. Act Two
13. A. N. Ostrovsky. ‘The Snow Maiden’. Act Three
14. St Petersburg Museum of Theatre and Music. ‘Vrubel. Costumes for a Muse’
15. Russian State Library. ‘When Did the Snow Maiden Become Ded Moroz’s Granddaughter?’
16. Presidential Library. Catalogue entry for the collection ‘The New Year Tree’, 1937
17. Presidential Library. ‘How People Prepared for New Year in Soviet Times’
18. Sergei Severny (S. N. Durylin). ‘Snegurka’s House’ (text of the 1912 poem)
19. V. V. Tikhomirov. A. N. Ostrovsky’s ‘The Snow Maiden’: Issues of Critical Assessment and Interpretation (1873–1900)
20. State Academic Maly Theatre. ‘The Return of “The Snow Maiden”’
21. Mariinsky Theatre. ‘The Snow Maiden’: the story of its premiere and a description of Anna Matison's production