Marina Tsvetaeva, Her Life in Poems - Rolf Gross

Alya and Sergey were kept imprisoned in Moscow. Marina spent endless hours waiting
in line to bring clothes and food for her two family members. At least she knew that they
were still alive. Early in 1940 Alya was sentenced by a special commission to ten years of
hard labor – for espionage! Efron was sentenced by a military court and dissappeared. On
her next routine visit to his prison, Marina was told that he was no longer there, and that
she should write to Beria personally for permission to visit Sergey. Her two letters to Beria
are preserved, touching examples of her naïve belief in Beria's humanitarian generosity.
Marina would never see Sergey or Alya again, but she was able to send letters to Alya until
her evacuation to Elabuga. – Beria, of course, never answered her appeal for Sergey – In
those days, Sergey's complete disappearance from the records of the prison system was
equivalent to him having been sentenced to death. Sergey was shot, apparently in 1941. It
is not clear when or where. As I see it, this knowledge was probably the major reason for
Marina's suicide.
She had returned to Russia, to be near and care for her family members. That longstanding
promise to herself had come to an end. She was no longer needed by anyone.
There was only Mur. She had been able to find a school for him, but she felt that she
increasingly stood in his way of becoming a Soviet citizen. She was in a terribel state of
depression. Her life-long thought of committing suicide grew more urgent by the month.
At this point Germany invaded Russia, - her Germany! It was a terrible blow to her
dearest childhood values. She had already suffered for the Czechs, now Russia seemed to
collaps at an alarming speed to the German onslaught. The invasion had an immediate
effect: On August 17, 1941 she and Murg were evacuated from Moscow to Elabuga, a
remote town on the river Kama in the Tatarstan Republic. She wrote three last letters
recommending Mur to the care of various people. – Two weeks after her arrival in Elabuga
she hanged herself on August 31, 1941.
Last photograph of Marina Tsveteava
Moscow-Kuntsevo, June 18, 1941
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