Diverging Paths: Essays on Twentieth-Century Russia and Those Who Left—and Those Who Stayed

In this collection of essays, curator and historian Egor Sennikov rescues individual lives from the vast current of twentieth-century Russian history. His subjects range from the once all-powerful Leon Trotsky to White Army pilot Vsevolod Marchenko, who was killed in the Spanish Civil War; from sculptor Vera Mukhina, creator of the iconic Worker and Kolkhoz Woman, to poet Irina Odoevtseva, who returned to the Soviet Union after sixty-five years in exile.
Each portrait is deliberately concise—a brief flash of light illuminating a single life before moving on to the next. In just a few pages, Sennikov captures how the upheavals of the twentieth century shaped the destinies of politicians, poets, artists, prize winners, émigrés, refugees, and returnees alike.
Some chose their paths; others accepted them as history left them little alternative. Together, these fragmented narratives form a powerful portrait of an era marked by displacement, loss, resilience, and difficult choices—an era whose dilemmas often echo those of the present day.

Egor Sennikov. Diverging Paths: Essays on Twentieth-Century Russia and Those Who Left—and Those Who Stayed. — Moscow: Individuum, 2026.
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