The Golden Key, or The Adventures of Buratino

The Golden Key, or The Adventures of Buratino is a fairy tale story by Soviet writer Alexei Tolstoy, which is a literary treatment of Carlo Collodi's tale The Adventures of Pinocchio. The Story of the Wooden Doll. Tolstoy dedicated the book to his future fourth and last wife, Lyudmila Krestinskaya.

History
The creation of the story began when in 1923 Alexei Tolstoy, being in exile, edited the Russian translation of the fairy tale by Italian writer Carlo Collodi "The Adventures of Pinocchio. The Story of the Wooden Doll" (1883), realized by Nina Petrovskaya. A year later this book was published in Berlin, in the publishing house "Nakanune" (when Tolstoy had already returned to the USSR).

This translation under Tolstoy's editorship stands out against the background of others by the presence in the text of a number of attempts to adapt Italian realities for Russian readers in the form of stylistic alterations (the text contains Russian proverbs, sayings, etc.). It is noteworthy that Tolstoy later transferred some of these adaptations to The Golden Key - in particular, in this translation, Geppetto was already renamed Carlo.

In October 1933, Tolstoy signed a contract with the publishing house "Detgiz" to write his own retelling of "Pinocchio" (co-authored with Nina Petrovskaya), but in December 1934 he had a myocardial infarction, because of which Tolstoy was forced to postpone work on the story and returned to it only in the spring of 1935 (for this he had to postpone work on the trilogy "Walking in Pains").

Although Tolstoy had originally planned to simply produce his own translation of the original, he became fascinated by the original idea and created his own story, adding the story of the hearth painted on an old canvas and the golden key. In the end, he strayed quite far from the original story for the reason that it was outdated for the period of socialist realism, and also because Collodi's tale is full of moralizing and cautionary maxims. On the other hand, Tolstoy wanted to infuse the characters with a more adventurous and fun spirit.

In 1936, Tolstoy wrote the play The Golden Key for the Central Children's Theater at the request of its founder Natalia Sats, and in 1939 he wrote the screenplay for a film of the same name, which was directed by Alexander Ptushko.

Until 1986, the fairy tale was published in the USSR 182 times and was translated into 47 languages. The total circulation amounted to 14.587 million copies.

Characters

 * Buratino is a wooden puppet with a long nose.
 * Papa Carlo (Папа Карло) is a barrel organ player of little means, who created Buratino.
 * Giuseppe (Джузеппе), nicknamed "Giuseppe the Blue Nose" for always being drunk, is a woodworker and a friend of Carlo. He wanted to make a table leg from the talking log, but got scared and finally gave the log as a present to Papa Carlo.
 * Karabas Barabas (Карабас-Барабас) is an evil puppeteer. He owns a puppet theater with many marionettes, including Malvina, Pierrot, and Harlequin.
 * Malvina (Мальвина) is a beautiful female puppet with blue hair.
 * Artemon (dog) (Артемон) is Malvina's loyal poodle.
 * Pierrot (Пьеро) is a sad puppet and a poet who is deeply in love with Malvina.
 * Harlequin (Арлекин) is Pierrot's scene partner in Karabas's theatre. He usually mocks and beats Pierrot.
 * Alice the Fox (Лиса Алиса) and Basilio the Cat (Кот Базилио), two swindlers.
 * Tortila the Turtle (Черепаха Тортила) gives the Golden Key to Buratino, the same key that was lost by Karabas.
 * Duremar (Дуремар) is a partner of Karabas Barabas who catches leeches for a living and so disturbs Tortilla's pond.

Adaptations

 * The Golden Key, a 1939 movie combining live action and stop-motion animation.
 * The Adventures of Buratino, a 1959 animated feature film by Soyuzmultfilm.
 * The Adventures of Buratino, a 1975 live-action TV film.
 * Buratino, Son of Pinocchio, a 2009 film.
 * The computer game The Adventures of Buratino (computer game) was released in 1993, the first graphic adventure computer game released in the post-Soviet Russia.
 * Aranykulcsocska, avagy Burattino kalandjai, a 2020 chamber opera composition by Mester Dávid.