Cenotaph of Marina Tsvetaeva is located on the high Bank of the Oka River in Tarusa. It is installed near the Pesochnoye estate, where the Tsvetaev family vacationed every summer at the end of the 19th century. The Khlysty cemetery was located here, where the followers of the Khlyst sect, which existed in Russia at the end of the 19th century, were buried.
While in exile in Paris, Marina Tsvetaeva wrote the short story "Khlystovky" in 1934. There she recalled her happy childhood spent in Tarusa, and wrote the following lines: "I would like to lie in the Tarussky Khlysty cemetery, under an elder bush, in one of those graves with a silver dove, where the reddest and largest strawberries grow in our places. But if this is not feasible, if not only I do not lie there, but there is no cemetery, I would like to put a stone on one of those hills that the Kirillovs went to us in Pesochnoye, and we went to them in Tarusa, from the Tarusa quarry: "MARINA TSVETAEVA wanted to lie here".
The first cenotaph with the inscription "Marina Tsvetaeva wanted to lie here" was installed by Tsvetaeva`s admirer, student Semyon Ostrovsky in 1962. He installed it at his own modest expense. However, at that time Marina Tsvetaeva`s daughter Ariadna Efron lived in Tarusa. She was working on publishing a collection of poems by her mother and was afraid that the cenotaph might somehow interfere with the publication of the book. As a result, Ariadne Efron asked him to remove it.
Then she regretted it very much and wrote in her memoirs: "The boy is completely penniless, in frayed trousers, he did everything himself, with his bare hands, for a scholarship — but it`s not about money! He managed to convince the executive committee, managed to get a block and transport from the director of the quarry, found stonemasons — all within a week, in the pouring rain, driven by a single desire to fulfill the will… And I, the daughter, had to fight with him and overcome him. It`s all terrible. It is difficult for the mind to overdo the soul, there is always some kind of falsehood in this. In this case, the falsehood is quite definite. What to do! What can you do!". Due to Ariadne`s decision, Marina Tsvetaeva`s first cenotaph was removed a week later.
In 1988, a second Cenotaph was installed at the same place with the words: "MARINA TSVETAEVA wanted to lie here." It stands on the bank of the Oka and no one removes it anymore. Marina Tsvetaeva herself, after her suicide on August 31, 1941, in the house of the Blacksmith Brodelshchikov in Yelabuga, was buried in the Peter and Paul Cemetery in an unmarked grave. 20 years later, Anastasia, Marina Tsvetaeva`s sister, came to Yelabuga and found the most likely place of Marina Tsvetaeva`s grave on the southwestern outskirts of the cemetery. Now there is a monument on it.
