A Matryoshka doll (Cyrillic матрёшка or матрешка) is a Russian nesting doll . Female dolls are also known as the baboushka ("kind old woman", Cyr. бабушка) and male as dedoushka ("kind old man", Cyr.дедушка).

A matryoshka doll

A set of Matryoshka dolls consists of a wooden figure which can be pulled apart to reveal another figure of the same sort inside. It has in turn another figure inside, and so on. The number of nested figures is usually six or more. The shape is mostly cylindrical, rounded at the top for the head and tapered towards the bottom, but little else; the dolls have no hands (except those that are painted). The artistry is in the painting of each doll, which can be extremely elaborate. The theme is usually peasant girls in traditional dress, but can be almost anything, for instance fairy tales or Soviet leaders (most famously the Gorby doll ).

Matryoshka dolls are not a traditional Russian handicraft; the first one dates from 1890, and is said to have been inspired by souvenir dolls from Japan. However, the concept of nested objects was familiar in Russia, having been applied to carved wooden apples and Easter eggs; the first Fabergé egg, in 1885, had a nesting of egg, yolk, hen, and crown.

The story tells that Sergei Maliutin , a painter from a folk crafts workshop in the "Abramtsevo" estate of a famous Russian industrialist and patron of arts Savva Mamontov , saw a set Japanese wooden dolls representing Shichi-fuku-jin, the Seven Gods of Fortune. The largest doll was that of Fukurokuju, a happy bald god with an unusually tall chin. It nested the six remaining deities. Inspired, Maliutin drew a sketch of a Russian version of the toy. It was carved by Vasiliy Zvezdochkin in a toy workshop in Sergiyev Posad and painted by Sergei Maliutin. It consisted of eight dolls; the outermost was a girl in an apron, then the dolls alternated between boy and girl, with the innermost a baby.

In 1900, M.A. Mamontova, the wife of Savva Mamontov, presented the dolls at the World Exhibition in Paris and the toy earned a bronze medal. Soon many other places in Russia started making matryoshkas of various styles.

A common variety of matryoshka doll featured the leaders of the Soviet Union, starting with the largest, Mikhail Gorbachev, then Leonid Brezhnev (Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko almost never appear due to the short length of their respective terms), then Nikita Khrushchev, Josef Stalin and finally the smallest, Vladimir Lenin.

There are several areas with notable Matryoshka styles; Sergiyev Posad, Semionovo (currently town of Semyonov), Polkholvsky Maidan , and Kirov.