Russian folklore

Maslenitsa (; ; ; ), also known as Butter Lady, Butter Week, Crepe week, or Cheesefare Week, is an Eastern Slavic religious and folk holiday which has retained a number of elements of Slavic mythology in its ritual. It is celebrated during the last week before Great Lent; that is, the eighth week before Eastern Orthodox Pascha, equivalent to the West's Sexagesima.

Russian cossack explorer and pirate

legendary carpet used for transportation

thumb| Dobrynya Nikitich rescues Zabava Putyatichna from the dragon Gorynych, by [[Ivan Bilibin (1941)]]

East-Slavic folk holiday in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and Russia

thumb|right|Ivan Bilibin's Alkonost

Grand Prince of Vladimir (1188-1238)

thumb|300x300px|The three most famous bogatyrs, Dobrynya Nikitich, [[Ilya Muromets and Alyosha Popovich, appear together in Viktor Vasnetsov's 1898 painting Bogatyrs kept in the Tretyakov Gallery.]] A bogatyr (, ; , ) or vityaz (, ; , ) is a stock character in medieval East Slavic legends, akin to a Western European knight-errant. Bogatyrs appear mainly in Rus' epic poems—bylinas. Historically, they came into existence during the reign of Vladimir the Great (Grand Prince of Kiev from 978 to 1015) as part of his elite warriors (druzhina),

thumb|Sadko, Palekh miniature

Kitezh () is a legendary and mythical city beneath the waters of Lake Svetloyar in the Voskresensky District of the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast in central Russia. Reference to Kitezh appears for the first time in Kitezh Chronicle, an anonymous book from the late 18th century, believed to have originated among the Old Believers.

Zilant (; ; , ) is a legendary creature, something between a dragon and a wyvern in Tatar mythology. Since 1730, it has been the official symbol of Kazan, the capital city of the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia. This winged snake is mentioned in legends about the foundation of Kazan.

opera by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Russian folk hero

Max Otto von Stierlitz (, ) is the lead character in a Russian book series written in the 1960s by Yulian Semyonov, and the television adaptation Seventeen Moments of Spring (starring Vyacheslav Tikhonov) as well as feature films (produced in the Soviet era) and a number of sequels and prequels. Other actors portrayed Stierlitz in several other films. Stierlitz has become a stereotypical spy in Soviet and post-Soviet culture, similar to James Bond in Western culture. American historian Erik Jens has described Stierlitz as the "most popular and venerable hero of Russian spy fiction".

Slavic folk Christianity holiday

Russian folk fairy tale

character in East Slavic folk poems

collection of Russian fairy tales, collected by Alexander Afanasyev

thumb|Oleg of Novgorod|Oleg meets the volkhv. Painting by [[Viktor Vasnetsov.]] A volkhv or volhv (Cyrillic: Волхв; Polish: Wołchw, translatable as wiseman, wizard, sorcerer, magus, i.e. shaman, gothi or mage) is a priest in ancient Slavic religions and contemporary Slavic Native Faith.

Slavic folklore character

book of Siberian folk tales compiled by Pavel Bazhov

Russian folklorist

British scholar and translator (1828-1889)

Gagana is a miraculous bird with an iron beak and copper claws featured in Russian folklore. She is said to live on the Buyan Island. The bird is often mentioned in incantations. It is also said this bird guards the Alatyr, alongside Garafena the snake.

thumb|Sadko (painting)|Sadko by [[Ilya Repin]] In Russian folklore, Chernava (diminutive: Chernavushka; ) is Sea Tsar's daughter (or, according to some versions, a niece), spirit and personification of the river of the same name. She is a mermaid. Her head and upper body are human, while the lower body is a fish's tail. Chernava is famed from her appearance in the epic of Sadko.

fictional character

creatures of European folklore

mythical creature in Russian folklore