Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (Russian: ????´?? ???´????? ?????´???, Marina Ivanovna Cvetaeva) (26 September/8 October 1892 – 31 August 1941) was a Russian and Soviet poet and writer.


Marina Tsvetaeva was born in Moscow. She was one of the most original of the Russian 20th-century poets. Her work was not looked kindly upon by Stalin and the Bolshevik régime; her literary rehabilitation only began in the 1960s.


Marina Tsvetayeva (1892–1941) was one of the four great poets of Russia in the first half of the twentieth century. Her long poem of the Civil War, "Swans' Encampment", was finished in Moscow in 1921, though it remained unpublished until 1957. It is composed in the form of a journal, beginning on the day of Tsar Nicholas II's abdication in March 1917 and ending late in 1920 with the final surrender of the White Army. The poem intends to honour those who fought against the Communists – the "swans" of the title refers to the men of the White Army, in which the poet's husband was an officer – but its sympathies are extensive,



Tsetsaeva was to witness the Russian Revolution first hand. On trains, she came into contact with ordinary Russian people and was shocked by the mood of anger and violence. She wrote in her journal: "In the air of the compartment hung only three axe-like words: bourgeois, Junkers, leeches". After the 1917 Revolution, Efron joined the White Army, and Marina returned to Moscow hoping to be reunited with her husband. She was trapped in Moscow for five years, where there was a terrible famine.

She wrote six plays in verse and narrative poems, including The Tsar's Maiden (1920), and her epic about the Civil War, The Swans' Encampment, which glorified those who fought against the communists. The cycle of poems in the style of a diary or journal begins on the day of Czar Nicholas II's abdication in March 1917, and ends late in 1920, when the anti-communist White Army was finally defeated. The 'swans' of the title refers to the volunteers in the White Army, in which her husband was fighting as an officer.