Editing Tarusa (section)

==History==
Tarusa is known to have existed since 1246,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Cohen |first1=Saul Bernard |title=The Columbia Gazetteer of the World: A to G |date=2008 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-14554-1 |page=3819 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=C6PLxz8EMk0C |language=en}}</ref> when it was the capital of one of the [[Upper Oka Principalities]]—the [[Principality of Tarusa]].<ref name=sgk/> The first ruler of this principality was Grand Duke Yury Mikhailovich, the son of Grand Duke [[Michael of Chernigov|Mikhail Vsevolodovich of Chernigov]]. Later, the local rulers moved their seats to [[Meshchovsk]] and [[Boryatino]], and Tarusa was subjugated by the [[Grand Duchy of Moscow]] in the late 14th century. In the mid-15th century, Tarusa passed to [[Grand Duchy of Lithuania|Lithuania]], and later on it fell back to the Grand Duchy of Moscow.<ref name=sgk>{{cite book|author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |title=Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich, Tom XII|year=1892|language=pl|location=Warszawa|page=218}}</ref> In the 16th century, it was fortified with ramparts and trenches in defense against the [[Crimean Tatars]] and [[Nogai Horde]].<ref name=sgk/> In 1876, there were 40 craftsmen and 7 small factories in Tarusa.<ref name=sgk/>

Soviet authority in Tarusa was established on December&nbsp;27, 1917. In the following years, the town's churches were closed and a monument to [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] was erected on the central square. During [[World War II]], German troops approached Tarusa and took it on their way to Moscow. The town was occupied by the Germans between October&nbsp;24 and December&nbsp;19, 1941. After that, the town was retaken by the Red Army which crossed the Oka River in winter under the frantic German fire and successfully attacked the German strongholds on the higher bank of Oka. Remnants of the town's fortifications and the town wall can still be seen today in the community park near the Peter and Paul Cathedral.
[[File:Tarusaleninstreet.jpg|left|thumb|Lenin st. in Tarusa]]
During the Soviet period, Tarusa became the place where many dissidents and people repressed by the Soviet authorities used to settle. Tarusa became the home place for such famous dissident figures as [[Anatoly Marchenko]], [[Larisa Bogoraz]], [[Gleb Yakunin]], [[Pavel Litvinov]], [[Alexander Ginzburg]], [[Andrey Amalrik]], [[Sergei Kovalev]], [[Zoya Krakhmalnikova]], [[Lev Kopelev]], and [[Frida Vigdorova]]. The book ''Tarusa - the 101st kilometer'' by [[Tatyana Melnikova]] is devoted to the lives and fates of the dissidents who lived in Tarusa.

In 1961, [[Konstantin Paustovsky]] fought to publish his famous ''[[Tarusa Pages]]'', which became the only book in the Soviet Union which escaped Moscow-based central party censorship and offered its pages for various free-thinking and dissident writers. After the book was published, it was declared ideologically harmful and removed from all bookstores and libraries. The director of the Kaluga publishing house was reprimanded, the editor-in-chief was fired, and other repressions were to follow. It was only Paustovsky's personal appeal to [[Nikita Khrushchev]] that stopped the wave of planned repressions. Nevertheless, the ''Tarusa Pages'' became a significant and meaningful event in the Soviet literature. The book introduced to the public such authors as [[Bulat Okudzhava]], [[Vladimir Maksimov (writer)|Vladimir Maksimov]], Frida Vigdorova, [[Nadezhda Mandelstam]], and [[Naum Korzhavin]], who enjoyed immense popularity in the later years.