Paul Chavchavadze
Paul Alexandrovitch Chavchavadze (27 June 1899 – 12 July 1971) was a Russian Prince, writer and translator.
Contents
Biography
Paul Chavchavadze was born in Saint Petersburg, Imperial Russia, the son of Alexander Chavchavadze — a military officer who served in the Savage Division in the Caucasus, under Grand Duke Michael, — and Marie Rodzianko. He descended from the Chavchavadze family of the Kakheti province in Georgia, and also, in a direct line, from the last King of Georgia, George XII.
After the Russian Revolution, Chavchavadze emigrated to the United Kingdom, and then to the United States in 1927. He worked for many years with the Cunard Line. During World War II he served as field director of the Red Cross and worked in Europe and Asia.
As a novelist he wrote Father Vikenty and Family Album which was a historical novel about the Crimean War. He also translated Only One Year (1969), by Svetlana Alliluyeva,[1] only daughter of Joseph Stalin,[2] an account of her year-long journey to defect from the USSR to America.[3]
Active on the Cape Cod summer theatre scene, Chavchavadze's play Russian Pond was produced in 1955 at the Orleans Arena Theatre.[4]
He was married to Princess Nina Georgievna of Russia (1901–1974), daughter of Grand Duke George Mikhailovich of Russia (1863–1919) and his wife Princess Marie of Greece (1876–1940). The couple had a son, David Chavchavadze, who worked as CIA officer in the Soviet Union Division.
He lived in Wellfleet for many years, where the Chavchavadzes befriended Edmund Wilson and his family.
Paul Chavchavadze died in Hyannis, Barnstable County, Massachusetts.[5]
Works
- Family Album (1949)
- The Mountains of Allah (1953; reminiscences)
- Father Vikenty: A Novel (1955; 1957)
- Marie Avinov: Pilgrimage through Hell (1968)
- Because the Night Was Dark (1971; novel)
Notes
- ↑ Wolfe, Bertram D. (1970). "Only One Year by Svetlana Alliluyeva," The Russian Review, Vol. XXIX, No. 1, pp. 88–90.
- ↑ Sullivan, Rosemary (2015). Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva. New York, NY: Harper.
- ↑ Allilueva, Svetlana (1969). Only One Year. New York: Harper & Row.
- ↑ Variety (August 17, 1955), p. 65
- ↑ "Paul Chavchavadze Dies at 72; Translated Book by Alliluyeva," The New York Times (July 10, 1971), p. 26.
References
- Wilson, Reuel K. (2008). To the Life of the Silver Harbor: Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy on Cape Cod. Hanover and London: University Press of New England.
- Wilson, Rosalind Baker (1989). Near the Magician: A Memoir of My Father, Edmund Wilson. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.
