Xenia Denikina

Xenia Vasilievna Denikina (Russian: Ксе́ния Васи́льевна Дени́кина, née Chizh, Чиж; 2 April [O.S. 21 March] 1892 – 3 March 1973) was a Russian writer. From 1918 until his death in 1947, she was married to Anton Denikin.

Xenia Denikina
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
Xenia Denikina and Anton Denikin, 1930s.
Born
Xenia Vasilievna Chizn

2 April 1892
Biała Podlaska, Siedlce Governorate, Russian Empire
Died3 March 1973(1973-03-03) (aged 80)
Louviers, France
Other namesKsenia Chizh, Ksenia Denikina, K. V. Denikina
Occupation(s)College professor, writer
SpouseAnton Denikin
ChildrenMarina Denikina

Early life

Xenia Chizh (sometimes transcribed 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.[1]

Career

Denikina and her family went into exile in 1920, living eventually in France and Belgium, where she helped her husband write his memoirs.[2] The couple took refuge in Mimizan in World War II,[3] 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.[1][4] The Denikins moved to New York City after the war. Her husband died in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1947.[5]

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.[6][7]

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.[4] It was called "a unique portrait of émigré fortunes at their lowest ebb".[3] Her remains and those of her husband were reinterred at Donskoy Monastery in Moscow in 2005, just before Marina's death that year.[8][9] Her papers, and her husband's, are in the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European Culture at Columbia University Libraries.[10][11]

References
  1. Dimitry V. Lehovich (1974). White against Red. Internet Archive. W W Norton & Co Inc (Np); 1st edition (June 1974). pp. 60, 478. ISBN 978-0-393-07485-7.
  2. Denikin, Anton I. (1975-08-14). The Career of a Tsarist Officer: Memoirs, 1872-1916. U of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-8166-5740-7.
  3. Johnston, Robert H. (Robert Harold) (1988). New Mecca, new Babylon : Paris and the Russian exiles, 1920-1945. Internet Archive. Montreal : McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 177. ISBN 978-0-7735-0643-5.
  4. Grey, Marina (1976). Mimizan-sur-guerre: le journal de ma mère sous l'Occupation (in French). Paris: Stock. ISBN 978-2-234-00498-6. OCLC 2375354.
  5. "Famous Russian General is Dead". The Edmonton Bulletin. 1947-08-09. p. 1. Retrieved 2021-09-21 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. Srebrianski-Harwell, Xenia. "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.
  7. Arthur, Aten, Marion & Orrmont. Last Train Over Rostov Bridge. Ashgrove Publishing. ISBN 978-1-85398-405-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  8. Laruelle, Marlene; Karnysheva, Margarita (2020-11-12). Memory Politics and the Russian Civil War: Reds Versus Whites. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-350-14998-4.
  9. "Daughter Of Anti-Bolshevik General Denikin Dies". RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty. November 17, 2005. Retrieved 2021-09-21.
  10. "Anton Ivanovich and Kseniia Vasil'evna Denikin Papers, 1905-1970". Columbia University Libraries Finding Aids. Retrieved 2021-09-21.
  11. Kenez, Peter (2007-07-01). Red Attack, White Resistance: Civil War in South Russia, 1918. New Acdemia+ORM. ISBN 978-1-955835-18-3.
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