CONDEMNED TO ALL THAT FATE ASSIGNS is a collection of poems by authors you’ve likely never encountered before — poets who became émigrés, fragments scattered by the revolutions and the Civil War in the former Russian Empire. They sought to rebuild their lives in Paris and Belgrade, Berlin and New York, Prague and Reval… In these cities, some began writing for the first time, while others continued their work in Russian.

It wasn’t until the final years of Perestroika that readers in the Soviet Union discovered that Russian-language culture had endured in emigration. New names emerged, and voices long silenced began to sing again. But this unruly, diverse chorus — shaped by unimaginable exile — felt alien to many. Soon after, émigré literature faded into the margins, a domain for specialists and the deeply curious. And so it remained — until another shared tragedy and another wave of emigration brought it back into the spotlight.

This kind of mini-anthology is being published for the first time in decades — and for the first time ever with translations into French and English. These poems have waited nearly a century to reach a new generation of Russian exiles. The book is arranged so that today’s émigré readers can find reflections of their own lives within these lines: the pain of irreversible loss, the drive to survive, the search for a place to call home, the looming shadow of uncertainty, the longing for peace, and the enduring hope of returning someday…