Marina Tsvetaeva Museums 

Marina Tsvetaeva is one of Russia's most beloved poets of the Silver Age. Many of her poems have become very famous romances and songs known to every Russian person. Marina Tsvetaeva ranks second after Alexander Pushkin in terms of the number of museums dedicated to her. Marina Tsvetaeva's museums have been established in all cities, which have played a big role in her fate.

Marina Tsvetaeva was born on September 26, 1892 in Moscow, into a wealthy family. Her father was a professor at Moscow University, a philologist and an art critic. Mother Maria Mein from a Polish aristocratic family was a talented pianist, a student of Nikolai Rubinstein. She began writing her first poems at the age of six. However, after the revolution, the fate of Marina Tsvetaeva turned out tragically.

In this review on the portal geomerid.com you can read about all the museums in Russian cities dedicated to Marina Tsvetaeva.

Marina Tsvetaeva's Museums in Russia
1. Tsvetaevs Museum in Ivanovo
2. Tsvetaevs Museum in Tarusa
3. Voloshin House Museum in Koktebel
4. Marina Tsvetaeva Museum in Moscow
5. Tsvetaev Museum in Alexandrov
6. Marina Tsvetaeva Museum in Bolshevo
7. Marina Tsvetaeva Museum in Yelabuga
8. Peter and Paul cemetery in Yelabuga
9. Tsvetaeva Literary Museum in Yelabuga

Tsvetaevs Museum in Ivanovo

The Tsvetaev family House-Museum is located in the village of Novo-Talitsy, 8 kilometers from the center of Ivanovo. In the 19th century it was located far from the city, but now Novo-Talitsy can be called the western suburb of Ivanovo. The museum is located in a wooden house of the 19th century. Three generations of the Tsvetaev family lived here, and the father of the great Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva was born. 

As a child, Marina Tsvetaeva lived in a wealthy family. Her father, Ivan Tsvetaev, was an honored professor at Moscow University and the founder of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. However, his background was not noble, and his parents lived poorly. You can find out about this by visiting the Tsvetaev Family Museum in Ivanovo.  

Vladimir Tsvetaev, Marina Tsvetaeva`s paternal grandfather, was a priest. He was born in the small village of Stebachevo, near Suzdal. His father was also a priest and served in the local parish church. In 1841, Vladimir Tsvetaev received a parish in the village of Drozdovo near the city of Shuya, Vladimir region.  

His wife`s name was Ekaterina Vasilyevna, she was an orphan. In Drozdovo, she gave birth to two sons, Peter and Ivan (Marina Tsvetaeva`s future father). The parish in Drozdovo was poor, so at that time the priest`s family lived in extreme need. 

In 1853, Vladimir Tsvetaev received a parish in St. Nicholas Church, in the village of Novo-Talitsy, Ivanovo region. This church was built in the style of Peter the Great Baroque in 1775. The priest`s family settled in a wooden house near the church. Here Vladimir Tsvetaev had two more sons, Fedor and Dmitry.  

From 1881 he worked at the Rumyantsev Museum, and in 1901 became its director. In 1912, he founded the Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, which gained worldwide fame. Now it is called the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. 

In 1891, Ivan Tsvetaev married Maria Mein. Her parents were Polish aristocrats. In 1892, their daughter Marina Tsvetaeva was born, who became one of the most famous poets of the “Silver Age” in Russia. Marina Tsvetaeva has never been to her father`s house in Novo-Talitsy, but the city authorities decided to perpetuate the memory of the Tsvetaev family. In 1988, they created a museum in the house where Ivan Tsvetaev was born.

Tsvetaevs Museum in Tarusa

The Museum of the Tsvetaev Family in Tarusa is dedicated not only to Marina Tsvetaeva, but also to the whole family when they came to Tarusa from Moscow at the end of the 19th century. It was the happiest time for Marina Tsvetaeva. She grew up in a family of wealthy parents, surrounded by love and care.

The Tsvetaev family came to Tarusa every summer from 1892 to 1902. Marina Tsvetaeva was born on October 8, 1892, and the next year she was brought to Tarusa for the summer. Every summer, the Tsvetaevs rented a large house with an attic, preserved from the landowner's estate. This area of Tarusa was called Pesochnoye. 

In 1902, Marina Tsvetaeva's mother was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and the whole family went to Europe for 4 years, where Maria Alexandrovna Main was treated in boarding houses, and Marina and her sister Anastasia lived with her. They visited France, Switzerland and Germany.

When the sisters Marina and Anastasia Tsvetaeva came to Tarusa from 1907 to 1910, they stayed in the Tio House for the whole summer. In 1910 Marina was already 18 years old and the next year, 1911, she went to the Black Sea to Koktebel to visit Maximilian Voloshin. There she met Sergei Efron, whom she married in 1912. Then almost every summer they tried to go to Voloshin's House in Koktebel. Now Voloshin's Museum is open there, but many exhibits are dedicated to his friendship with Marina Tsvetaeva.

Voloshin House Museum in Koktebel

Maximilian Voloshin House-Museum is located on the Koktebel Embankment. The famous poet, artist and literary critic Maximilian Voloshin lived here permanently from 1917 to 1932. He was a very hospitable person and dozens of poets and writers came to visit him every summer. So, thanks to Voloshin, Koktebel became a bohemian resort and continues to be one today.

Maximilian Voloshin built a house in Koktebel with his mother in the period from 1903 to 1913. However, already in 1911 he invited his friends from the bohemian circles of Moscow and St. Petersburg here for the first time. They founded a commune, which they called the "The Order of the Blockheads ". Voloshin proclaimed the charter of the order: "The requirement for residents: love for people and making a share in the intellectual life of the house." 

Vera, Lilya and Sergey Efron, Marina and Asya Tsvetaeva, Manya Gehtman, Bela and Lenya Feinberg and many other people whose names are not known gathered here during the first summer season of the Order of the Blockheads. This summer Sergey Efron and Marina Tsvetaeva met in Koktebel, the story of their love and family life began here. 

Voloshin died in 1932, but his wife lived in this house until 1976. She continued to keep the traditions of Voloshin and received guests every summer. During the WWII and the German occupation, she kept the house intact. The museum in the Voloshin house was established in 1984. The interiors of the rooms are preserved the same as they were during Voloshin`s lifetime. There are many artistic and graphic works by Voloshin. Also, many of Voloshin`s personal belongings have been preserved in the house.

Marina Tsvetaeva Museum in Moscow

The Marina Tsvetaeva Museum in Moscow is located at No. 6 in Borisoglebsky Lane, not far from Novy Arbat street. A two-storey house for four apartments was built here in the middle of the 19th century. Marina Tsvetaeva lived in apartment No. 3 on the second floor from 1914 to 1922 with her husband Sergei Efron and two daughters. Now the Tsvetaeva Museum occupies the entire building.

In 1914 Marina Tsvetaeva was 22 years old. Before that, she lived in her parents' house, and for the summer the Tsvetaevs rented a Villa in Tarusa, Kaluga region, and vacationed there with the whole family. In May 1911, Marina went to the Black Sea for the first time to visit Maximilian Voloshin in Koktebel. There, in Voloshin's House, she met Sergei Efron. Six months later, on January 29, 1912, they got married, and on September 5, 1912, their first daughter Alya (Ariadna) was born. 

After the wedding, Marina Tsvetaeva and Sergey Efron rented an apartment in Sivtsev Vrazhek Lane. They lived there from October 1911 to 1912. Then they went abroad and lived for a long time in the Crimea. Finally, they bought a mansion on Big Polyanka, but then they rented it out, and in 1914 and they rented an apartment in Borisoglebsky Lane for themselves. The apartment has a very unusual layout, but Tsvetaeva, as soon as she entered it, exclaimed: "This is mine!". From the corridor you can enter through three doors. 

The period before the revolution of 1917 was the most productive, when Marina Tsvetaeva wrote a large number of verses, six plays, four poems. The love story of Marina Tsvetaeva and Sofia Parnok belongs to the same period. They met on October 16, 1914, and on Christmas they went together to Rostov the Great. This affair was a very bright event for Marina, and she wrote a cycle of poems "To a girlfriend". Some of them have become the most famous romances: "Under the caress of a plush blanket", "In front of a mirror, where there's fog And turbid sleep, your way I want to try - where it will lead And where there is the quay." 

After the Revolution of 1917, the situation deteriorated sharply. Sergei Efron, while in the Volunteer Army, joined the White Movement. He was still far away from his family. The house in Moscow was not heated, and Marina heated the stove with furniture from the apartment. In 1918, a communal apartment was created from the Tsvetaevs' apartment and several more families were settled. 

In 1919, the situation became desperate. There was no money for food, and Tsvetaeva gave her daughters to the Kuntsevo orphanage, which she later regretted very much. Daughter Irina died of starvation there. In 1921 Marina Tsvetaeva received the first letter from Sergei Efron. She learned that her husband was alive and living in Berlin. In 1922, Marina decided to leave Russia for her husband. So she left the apartment in Borisoglebsky Lane.    

Marina and Anastasia Tsvetaeva Museum in Alexandrov

The Marina and Anastasia Tsvetaeva Museum in Alexandrov was opened in 1991. It is located in a small wooden house. Anastasia Tsvetaeva lived there with her common-law husband, Maurice Mints, and Marina visited her sister several times in 1915-1916. 

In 1912, Anastasia Tsvetaeva married 19-year-old Boris Trukhachev at the age of 18. In August of the same year, she gave birth to a son Andrey, but their marriage broke up in 1914. After that, Anastasia met with Maurice Mintz. He was older than her and since 1914 served as a chemical engineer at a military plant in the city of Alexandrov (130 km of Moscow). Anastasia moved with her son Andrey to live with him. Anastasia did not burden herself with everyday life and was fond of literature.

They lived in a small four-room house, which they rented from a local mathematics teacher A.Lebedev. He lived in a neighboring house, which is now also part of the museum exhibition. In 1915 Anastasia Tsvetaeva wrote her first philosophical work "Royal Reflections". Marina Tsvetaeva came to her sister with brief visits.

In the summer of 1916, Marina Tsvetaeva came to her sister for three weeks. It was a period similar to Pushkin's autumn in Boldino. She wrote many famous poems here. The most famous poem "I like that you are not sick with me, I like that I am not sick with you" Tsvetaeva wrote in Alexandrov in May 1915. It is dedicated to Maurice Mintz, her sister's husband. 

Tsvetaeva Museum in Bolshevo

The Marina Tsvetaeva Museum in Bolshevo is located near the railway station in the city of Korolev, Moscow region. Marina Tsvetaeva and Sergey Efron lived in this house with their children after returning to Russia from emigration. Sergey Efron and his daughter Ariadna returned to Russia in 1937, and Marina Tsvetaeva and her son George came here from France on June 19, 1939.

Tsvetaeva and Efron's life in exile was quite difficult. Marina by that time was a famous poet and had royalties from poems, but all the endeavours of Sergei Efron ended in failures. He tried to become a magazine publisher, but was forced to close it. As a result, he got jobs where he was paid meager salaries.

In 1930, he began to work for the NKVD (soviet secret service). Daughter Ariadna also spoke very positively about the Soviet Union and urged her parents to return to their homeland. As a result, Sergey Efron and Ariadne were the first to return to the Soviet Union. They were settled in a house in the village of Bolshevo, which was built in 1933 by the Exportles organization, but actually belonged to the NKVD.

Tsvetaeva lived in this house for only 5 months. On August 27, 1939, his daughter Ariadna was arrested, and on October 10, Sergei Efron was arrested. On November 6, the Klepinins' neighbors were arrested. Marina Tsvetaeva was left alone in the house with her son George. On November 8, they left Bolshevo for Golitsyno, where they rented an apartment. Marina Tsvetaeva earned money by translations. Then they lived in a room of the Zoological Museum, and in September 1940 Marina rented a room on Pokrovsky Boulevard. Marina Tsvetaeva and her son left this house in August 1941 for evacuation to Yelabuga.

Marina Tsvetaeva Museum in Yelabuga

The Marina Tsvetaeva Museum in Yelabuga is located in a small wooden house where she spent the last 10 days of her life, from August 21 to 31, 1941. It was a period of complete despair and disappointment in life, because of which Marina Tsvetaeva committed suicide.

Marina Tsvetaeva and her son George went to the evacuation when German troops were approaching Moscow. Boris Pasternak tried to persuade her to stay in Moscow, and this would most likely have saved her life. In Moscow, she had friends and contracts to print her poems. However, Marina was afraid for her son. He was already 16 years old at that time. He was eager to be on duty on the roofs and extinguish bombs during the bombing of German planes. 

In Yelabuga, evacuated people were settled in the homes of local residents. Marina Tsvetaeva and her son were settled in the house of the blacksmith Brodelshchikov.  It was mentally and physically difficult for her. She reached an extreme degree of despair, so on August 31 she decided to pass away. She wrote three suicide notes in which she asked her friends to take care of the fate of her son George. One of the notes was addressed personally to her son, with whom Marina had a strained relationship after he grew up: "Murluga! Forgive me, but it would have been worse. I'm seriously ill, it's not me anymore. I love you madly. Understand that I couldn't live anymore. Tell Dad and Alya — if you see them—that you loved them until the last minute and explain that I got into a dead end."

Marina Tsvetaeva hanged herself on August 31, 1941 in the hallway of the house of the blacksmith Brodelshchikov on a large nail driven into a beam. Now this nail can be seen in the Tsvetaeva Museum in Yelabuga. All these events are displayed in the exposition of the Marina Tsvetaeva Museum in Yelabuga. 

Peter and Paul Cemetery in Yelabuga

There is a memorial grave of Marina Tsvetaeva at the Peter and Paul Cemetery in Yelabuga. The place where Marina Tsvetaeva was buried on September 2, 1941 is not known, but she is definitely buried on the southwestern outskirts of this cemetery. 

Marina Tsvetaeva was buried on September 2 at the Peter and Paul cemetery without a funeral service and a cross, since it is forbidden to bury suicides according to the church rite. According to one version, a stick was stuck in the place of her grave, but the next year it was carried away by streams of melted snow. According to another version, there was a cross on the grave, but other believers could have removed it, since she was a suicide. 

20 years later, in the autumn of 1960, Marina's sister Anastasia Tsvetaeva visited Yelabuga. She communicated with the widow of the caretaker of the Peter and Paul Cemetery, who died the same year. She pointed out an approximate location on the southern edge of the cemetery. 

Anastasia Tsvetaeva found four unmarked graves on the southern outskirts of the cemetery. A forked pine tree grew near one grave. She remembered that next to their Villa in Tarusa, where sisters Anastasia and Marina spent every summer, there was a similar forked pine tree. The sisters often climbed on it and talked for a long time. 

Anastasia decided that this was a sign from above and installed a cross near the grave under a pine tree with the inscription: "Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva is buried in this side of the cemetery." This is the most real burial place of the great Russian poet of the Silver Age. In 1970, the pine tree was cut down, and a large monument to Marina Tsvetaeva was erected on an unnamed grave. Now all lovers of the great poetess's work who come to Yelabuga come to this monument. 

Tsvetaeva Literary Museum in Yelabuga

Marina Tsvetaeva's Literary Museum is located 200 meters from the small wooden house of the blacksmith Brodelshchikov, where Marina and her son were settled during the evacuation. She passed away in this house on August 31, 1941 and now it houses the Marina Tsvetaeva House Museum. 

In the Literary Museum you can get acquainted with the work of the great poet of the Silver Age. The exhibition is dedicated not only to Marina Tsvetaeva, but also to her family.