I never really know what to expect from the Russian classics as I work my way through them - I have a collected set of different authors in the same binding, and I try to not read up on authors before I've read the books or it can really ruin it for me. I was pleasantly surprised by these. I really liked the mesh of folktales and sort of urban normality; I liked the repetition of certain elements, like that the narration was always through three layers of hearsay, and that there was always one element that was nothing like it used to be in the good old days, be it weddings, bars, food, alcohol, etc. I read that as pretty heavily sarcastic.

There is a certain repetition to reading stories like this; there was a lot of devil, more or less seriously invoked, and a lot of defeating him via Christian symbols. There were also a lot of courtship stories, which were okay. You got a good sense of what was attractive in a woman (in men, not so much. money and availability I guess? All the men seemed kind of like dicks, to be honest, but that is probably the modern lens wherein asking a girl to come out nicely, and then, when she doesn't immediately comply within two seconds, yelling at her and calling her a whore, seems like kind of a red flag. but that's just me. Or something.)

Brief content rundown:
Sorotschinsker Jahrmarkt: Dude has shrew of a wife and hot daughter; hot daughter wants to marry Some Guy Who Threw Shit At Her Stepmom. Father agrees but then wife talks him out of it. There's shenanigans with a devil looking to put together a red apron that got ripped up years ago and now curses the fair. Ends in marriage and wife getting pissed about marriage.

Die Johannisnacht - First of the Foma stories, which I found a little more difficult, because they are written heavily in oral vernacular. Features a guy who wants to marry some dude's hot daughter, but he's not rich enough. So he makes a deal with the devil via baba jaga and chops off the hot daughter's kid brother's head to get rich. Then he is haunted by his deeds even though he got the girl. everyone dies.

Die Mainacht oder die Ertrunkene - dude wants to marry someone's hot daughter Hanna (sensing a theme?) but his dad, who runs the town, is also after her and is a terrible philandering dickbag. Dude tells hanna a horror story about a drowned girl. dude gets drunk and leads the town in singing dirty songs about his dad. Dad gets mad and wants him arrested. Dude meets drowned girl, helps her get revenge on her stepmother. In return he gets pardoned for the dirty songs and gets to marry the girl.

Das verschwundene Schriftstück - foma's granddad wants to go somewhere with a writ of something, gets caught up in shenanigans involving the devil taking away a guy he just traded hats with even though that guy told him the devil was coming after him. he goes to hell to get his hat back because it had the writing in it.

Die Weihnacht - smith wants to marry some guy's hot daughter. She is vain and tells him to get the tzarina's shoes for her. meanwhile, some guy's hot daughter's father, hereafter known as some guy, is after the smith's witchy mother, who is also having affairs with four other guys including the devil. In a comedy of errors she hides them all in coal sacks so they don't see each other. smith carries out the sacks, catches the devil and forces him to take him to the tzarina, get the shoes, happy ever after for everyone but the smith's mom.

Schreckliche Rache - lots of gratuitous death. Some guy's daughter married in his absence but it turns out he's an evil warlock, and he kills the whole family slowly and terribly. It's because actually he was descended from an asshat and someone wanted revenge on the asshat's full family line.

Iwan Fjodorowitsch - Some guy comes home from the military and his aunt wants him to get married. This scares him.

Der verzauberte Ort - Foma's granddad (same one? different one?) can't jump over a particular spot in his garden. Then he is promised riches by the devil. Turns out the devil is a liar and a cheat. Whoda thunk it.