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# On 31 August 1941, in evacuation at Yelabuga, Marina Tsvetaeva took her own life
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/31-avgusta-1941-goda-v-elabuge-v-evakuatsii-dobrovolno-ushla-iz-zhizni-marina-tsvetaeva/
- Published: 2026-08-31T15:24:07.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:25:18.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Archive, Books, Heritage, People

On 31 August 1941, in evacuation at Yelabuga, Marina Tsvetaeva took her own life. That day her son Mur and the mistress of the house were sent off to clear a site for an airfield; she was left alone and hanged herself in the entrance passage. In the kitchen a frying pan of fish remained, cooked for her son's return.

Tsvetaeva left three notes. The first, to her son, said that she was gravely ill and could live no longer. The second was addressed to the literary men who were bound to find her: it asked them not to leave Mur alone and to take him to Nikolai Aseyev in Chistopol, and it carried a dreadful postscript: “Do not bury me alive! Check thoroughly.” The third note, on the fate of her son, was addressed to Aseyev himself and to the Sinyakov sisters.

Eighty-five years have passed since the day of her death, yet the exact place of burial has still not been established.

The official monument in the Petropavlovsk Cemetery was erected in 1970 without reference to any particular grave, in the approximate area of the burials of the autumn of 1941\. Since then there have been several versions of where the poetess lies. The first, the Churbanov version of 1985-86, has been refuted: the grave in question holds two women who took their own lives in 1946\. The second, the Matveyev version, remains in doubt; it is supposed that the grave most probably holds Yevgenia Kirichenko, an evacuee from Leningrad. The third, advanced by the researcher Yelena Pozdina, places the true grave in a corner of the cemetery, among the burials of drowned persons and suicides, on an unfenced plot that is under threat of development. Only in time for the present anniversary has a version been voiced by Igor Obolensky, who on the strength of archival documents points to an unnamed grave, bearing the date of death 31 August 1941, by a stone wall.

None of the versions can be verified with certainty, since that would require exhumation, but both Tsvetaeva's great-niece and the museum-reserve in Yelabuga are categorically opposed to it.

What remains is the [cenotaph](https://theparnassian.com/ia-by-khotela-lezhat-na-tarusskom-khlystovskom-kladbishche-pod-kustom-buziny-v-odnoi-iz-tekh-mogil-s-serebrianym-golubem-gde-rastet-samaia-krasnaia-i-krupnaia-v-nashikh-mestakh-zemliani/?ref=theparnassian.com) in Tarusa, where Tsvetaeva by her own words would have wished to be buried, and the gravestone in Yelabuga, regardless of the true place of burial. And one more cenotaph from Tarusa, which was thrown into the river.

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_21299@31-08-2026_18-24-07.jpg)

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_21300@31-08-2026_18-24-07.jpg)