David Chavchavadze

Who is David Chavchavadze?

Prince David Chavchavadze is an American author and a former Central Intelligence Agency officer of Georgian-Russian origin.

Chavchavadze was born in London to Prince Paul Chavchavadze and Princess Nina Georgievna of Russia, a descendant of a prominent Georgian noble family and the Imperial Russian dynasty. His father, Prince Paul, was a fiction writer and translator of writings from Georgian into English, and an émigré in the United Kingdom, and then the United States.

Chavchavadze entered the United States Army in 1943 and served during World War II as liaison for the U.S. Army Air Force Lend-Lease supply operations to the Soviet Union. After the war, he entered Yale University where he was a member of The Society of Orpheus and Bacchus, the second longest running a cappella group in the United States. He spent more than two decades of his career as a CIA officer in the Soviet Union Division.

After his retirement, Chavchavadze specialized in tracing the nobility of Imperial Russia and authored The Grand Dukes.