This audiobook is my personal take on the classics that accompany Russian-speaking people from childhood. Almost everyone knows Ivan Andreevich Krylov's fables: even if we don't recall the lines verbatim, the plots and images live within us constantly. We recognize the Crow and the Fox in everyday conversations, see the Dragonfly and the Ant in work conflicts, encounter the Wolf and the Lamb in the news and public life, and "The Lion on the Hunt" in any situation where might is disguised as justice.

This audiobook includes four fables:

"The Crow and the Fox,"

"The Dragonfly and the Ant,"

"The Wolf and the Lamb," and

"The Lion on the Hunt."

I read them not as children's didactic texts, but as adult, precise, and sometimes cruel prose of life, clothed in verse. Krylov wasn't just a fabulist-he was a keen observer of human nature, social roles, and the eternal mechanisms of power, flattery, laziness, fear, and hypocrisy. His characters aren't animals, but ourselves, recognizable and unchanging.

Centuries have passed, costumes, technology, and language have changed, but the situations themselves remain the same. This is why Krylov's fables so easily resonate in our memories when we observe injustice, stupidity, complacency, or vulnerability to force. They act as an internal commentary on what's happening around us.

When reading these texts, I try to preserve their clarity, irony, and inner rhythm, without softening the edges or turning them into moralizing. Let each fable sound as if it were written today-because, in essence, that's how it is.

The moral of this fable is this:

Centuries have passed, and we still haven't learned to truly utilize the wisdom of past authors-we still recognize ourselves in these stories, but rarely draw conclusions.