Three Bears, by Lev Tolstoy

Three bears return from a walk and find a little girl asleep in baby bear’s bed. This is Tolstoy’s version for “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”. In it the bears received the Russian names Mikhail Ivanovich, Natasha Petrovna and little Mishutka. The girl intruder is not named, and has been interpreted as a Napoleon figure, invading and wrecking the home of the good Russian bears, but ultimately being beaten back as Napoleon was in 1812. The story was also popular in Soviet times where mistrust of outsiders was encouraged.

Read the full original text in Yiddish.