Xenia Denikina
{{short description|Russian writer}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Xenia Denikina
| native_name = {{nobold|Ксения Деникина}}
| native_name_lang = ru
| image = Anton Denikin and Ksenia Denikina, 1930-th.jpg
| alt = A white woman and a white man, standing outdoors; she is wearing a dark suit, and he is wearing a beret, sweater, and trousers; he has a white beard and mustache, and dark eyebrows
| caption = Xenia Denikina and Anton Denikin, 1930s.
| other_names = Ksenia Chizh, Ksenia Denikina, K. V. Denikina
| birth_name = Xenia Vasilievna Chizn
| birth_date = 2 April 1892
| birth_place = Belaya Podlyaskaya, Siedlce Governorate, Vistula Land, Russian Empire
(now Biała Podlaska, Poland)
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1973|03|03|1892|04|02|df= y}}
| death_place = Louviers, France
| occupation = College professor, writer
| years_active =
| known_for =
| notable_works =
| spouse(s) = Anton Denikin
| children = Marina Denikina
| relatives =
}}
Xenia Vasilievna Denikina{{efn|{{langx|ru|Ксения Васильевна Деникина|Kseniya Vasilyevna Denikina}}}} ({{née}} Chizh;{{efn|{{langx|ru|Чиж|link=no}}}} 2 April [
Early life
Xenia Chizh{{efn|Often transcribed as Tchije}} was born in Biała Podlaska, then part of Congress Poland in the Russian Empire. Her father was Vassili Ivanovitch Chizn, an artillery officer and local official, and her mother was Elisaveta Alexandrovna Toumskaya. She graduated from the Institute for Young Ladies in Warsaw, and was training to be a teacher when she started a relationship with Anton Denikin.{{Cite book|last=Dimitry V. Lehovich|url=http://archive.org/details/whiteagainstred00dimi|title=White against Red|date=1974|publisher=W W Norton & Co Inc (Np); 1st edition (June 1974)|others=Internet Archive|isbn=978-0-393-07485-7|pages=60, 478}}
Career
Denikina and her family went into exile in 1920, living eventually in France and Belgium, where she helped her husband write his memoirs.{{Cite book|last=Denikin|first=Anton I.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DdV3ZwaaPJoC&dq=Xenia+Denikina&pg=PR3|title=The Career of a Tsarist Officer: Memoirs, 1872-1916|date=1975-08-14|publisher=U of Minnesota Press|isbn=978-0-8166-5740-7|language=en}} The couple took refuge in Mimizan in World War II,{{Cite book|last=Johnston|first=Robert H. (Robert Harold)|url=http://archive.org/details/newmeccanewbabyl0000john|title=New Mecca, new Babylon : Paris and the Russian exiles, 1920-1945|date=1988|publisher=Montreal : McGill-Queen's University Press|others=Internet Archive|isbn=978-0-7735-0643-5|pages=177}} and she was briefly arrested and imprisoned by the Germans. She acted as an interpreter between the German occupiers and the Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian exiles there. Denikina kept a hidden journal from 1940 to 1945, totalling 28 school notebooks by the end.{{Cite book|last=Grey|first=Marina|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/2375354|title=Mimizan-sur-guerre: le journal de ma mère sous l'Occupation|date=1976|publisher=Stock|isbn=978-2-234-00498-6|location=Paris|language=French|oclc=2375354}} The Denikins moved to New York City after the war. Her husband died in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1947.{{Cite news|date=1947-08-09|title=Famous Russian General is Dead|pages=1|work=The Edmonton Bulletin|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/85735526/famous-russian-general-is-dead/|access-date=2021-09-21|via=Newspapers.com}}
Denikina was chair of the Russian Institutes Alumnae Association when it was founded in 1954. She assisted Russian history scholars, organized her husband's papers, and hosted cultural events for the Russian émigré community in New York.Srebrianski-Harwell, Xenia. [https://books.google.com/books?id=u7A_DwAAQBAJ&dq=Xenia+Denikina&pg=PA164 "Celebrating the Russian Past: Émigré Festivities in 1950s/1960s New York"] in Gary Backhaus, ed., Environment, Space, Place 3(2)(Fall 2011): 164, 171-172.{{Cite book|last=Arthur|first=Aten, Marion & Orrmont|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Nu4hJyV6uL4C&dq=Xenia+Denikin+Columbia&pg=PT258|title=Last Train Over Rostov Bridge|publisher=Ashgrove Publishing|isbn=978-1-85398-405-1|language=en}}
Personal life and legacy
Xenia Chizh married a White Army general, Anton Denikin, in 1918. They had a daughter, Marina Denikina, born in 1919. Xenia Denikina became an American citizen in 1951, returned to France in 1971, and died at Louviers in 1973, aged 80 years. Her daughter translated Denikina's wartime journal into French and published it in 1976, as Mimizan-sur-Guerre, Le Journal de ma mère sous l'Occupation. It was called "a unique portrait of émigré fortunes at their lowest ebb". Her remains and those of her husband were reinterred at Donskoy Monastery in Moscow in 2005, just before Marina's death that year.{{Cite book|last1=Laruelle|first1=Marlene|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KZoJEAAAQBAJ&dq=Xenia+Denikina&pg=PT113|title=Memory Politics and the Russian Civil War: Reds Versus Whites|last2=Karnysheva|first2=Margarita|date=2020-11-12|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|isbn=978-1-350-14998-4|language=en}}{{Cite web|date=November 17, 2005|title=Daughter Of Anti-Bolshevik General Denikin Dies|url=https://www.rferl.org/a/1063028.html|access-date=2021-09-21|website=RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty|language=en}} Her papers, and her husband's, are in the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European Culture at Columbia University Libraries.{{Cite web|title=Anton Ivanovich and Kseniia Vasil'evna Denikin Papers, 1905-1970|url=https://findingaids.library.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_4077449|access-date=2021-09-21|website=Columbia University Libraries Finding Aids}}{{Cite book|last=Kenez|first=Peter|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Zsc8EAAAQBAJ&dq=Xenia+Denikin+Columbia&pg=PT6|title=Red Attack, White Resistance: Civil War in South Russia, 1918|date=2007-07-01|publisher=New Acdemia+ORM|isbn=978-1-955835-18-3|language=en}}
Notes
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References
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Denikina, Xenia}}
Category:Russian women writers
Category:People from Biała Podlaska