Category: Profiles

Georgian Association’s former Board Member, Mamia Zakradze has celebrated his 100th birthday!

Mamia Zakradze’s life story is a tribute to the struggles of his generation of Georgians. Born in Gomi, Georgia, on April 10, 1920, Mamia Zakradze’s youth fell on fighting the Nazis in WWII. After the war ended, Mamia stayed in Germany where he met the love of his life, Helena Seitz. They had two children together, Alfred and Vera Zakradze. However, because of the Iron Curtain he lost touch with his parents and relatives in Georgia, who did not even know that he survived the war until early 60s.

In 1950s, Mamia got involved with the work of the Georgian Association in the United States, which sponsored his and his family’s arrival to the US. The family arrived via Ellis Island like many other post-WWII immigrants. They originally settled in New York City before moving to College Point, NY where Mamia Zakradze currently resides.

For almost 30 years, Mamia Zakradze’s life was closely intertwined with the Georgian Association in the US where he was a member of the Board and proud supporter of all Georgian causes from 1950 through 1989. Mamia supported many noble Georgian initiatives, including the creation of Camp Alaverdi in Cold Spring, NY, a summer camp for kids from the Caucasus. At the invitation of the founder of the camp, Siko Eristavi, Mamia Zakradze became Vice President of Camp Alaverdi in 1964 and served there until his retirement in 1996. Even though the camp had to close soon after his retirement, Mamia remains optimistic that one day it will open again.

Despite all the struggles, Mamia Zarkadze’s life gives us optimism and belief in bright future for Georgia and the US.

The GA Board is wishing Mamia Zakradze a Very Happy 100^th Birthday! Congratulations on this amazing milestone! What an honor it is to celebrate a century of life with you. May you continue to enjoy the journey of life.

Born November 1, 1919 in Tbilisi, Georgia. Guivy Zaldastani was a Boston businessman who often played the role of diplomat between his adopted country and his native country of Georgia. At 84 he returned to his homeland and lived in Tblilisi to the great age of 87 passing away on October 12, 2007.

When Mr. Zaldastani introduced himself at gatherings, it would often surface during the course of a conversation that he was from Georgia. “Not that Georgia, of course,” he would quickly add in his rich, Eastern European accent, referring to the Southern US state. “I am from the Georgian Republic in the Caucasus. “For Georgian émigrés in Boston, Mr. Zaldastani was the meet-and-greeter who kept his door open to any and all who hailed from his homeland.

Mr. Zaldastani’s family fled Georgia when he was 5, but he returned to the hilly city of Tbilisi on the banks of the Mtkvari River in 2004, living not far from the American Academy he helped found. When his family left Georgia to steer clear of the impact of the communist takeover, they took up residence in Paris, living with other Georgians who left for similar reasons. He fought with French marines in World War II and earned a law degree from the Sorbonne in Paris in 1945.Three years later he moved to the United States, earning a Master’s of business administration from Harvard Business School in 1951. He became a US citizen shortly thereafter.

Mr. Zaldastani worked his way up in the management chain at Filene’s before starting his own chain of stores. As president and chief executive officer of The Finishing Touch, a bed-and-bath retail chain found in malls around Boston, Mr. Zaldastani traveled the world to purchase items to sell. He later branched into real estate, heading up the international division of a Boston-based real estate firm, and did consulting work for his brother’s engineering firm, Zaldastani Associates Inc.

When the Soviet Union started to collapse in the late 1980s, culminating in its dissolution in 1991, “He was over there on the next jet,” said his son, Nicholas of San Francisco. In visits to his homeland, Mr. Zaldastani was eager to have a hand in helping the nation develop and believed education was key. First, he helped several young Georgians to continue their education with scholarships at Harvard Business School.  Later, he worked with others to form the American Academy in Tbilisi, a school aimed at helping Georgian students get a solid academic foundation, and then attend US colleges so they could bring back ideas of democratization. Mr. Zaldastani was behind the successful efforts of the Georgian Association in the USA to obtain a grant from the US government to cover costs associated with training for the teachers at the Academy at Harvard and Boston University. The school opened in 2001, and school officials say it has become one of the toughest schools to get into in Georgia.  Today the Guivy Zaldastani American Academy in Tbilisi is the top private high school in Georgia, and graduates of the Academy are earning thousands of dollars in scholarships at top US schools every year.

George Balanchine made his mark in the world of ballet for over 50 years. He gained fame as a young choreographer and was the co-founder, artistic director and chief choreographer of the New York City Ballet. With his over 400 choreographed works, Balanchine transformed American dance and created modern ballet, developing a unique style with his dancers highlighted by brilliant speed and attack. With the School of American Ballet and later with the New York City Ballet, Balanchine established himself as one of the world’s leading classical choreographers. He almost single-handedly brought standards of excellence and quality performance to American ballet, and nearly every ballet company in the world has performed his work. He received several prestigious honors including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor bestowed on an American citizen.

George Balanchine was born Giorgi Melitonovitch Balanchivadze in 1904 in Saint Petersburg, in the family of noted Georgian opera singer and composer Meliton Balanchivadze, one of the founders of the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theatre and later as the culture minister of Georgia. The rest of Balanchine’s Georgian side of the family comprised largely artists and soldiers. Balanchine was not particularly interested in ballet as a child, but his mother insisted that he audition with his sister Tamara, who shared her mother’s interest in the art, and viewed it as a form of social advancement. George’s brother Andria Balanchivadze followed his father’s love for music and became a well-known composer in Georgia. At the age of 10, Giorgi enrolled at the Mariinsky Theatre’s ballet school where he learned the precise and athletic Russian dancing style. He graduated in 1921 and subsequently attended the Petrograd State Conservatory of Music, leaving the conservatory after three years. While still in his teens, Balanchine choreographed his first work. In 1923, with fellow dancers, Balanchine formed a small ensemble, the Young Ballet, and used a group of dancers from the school to present his earliest choreographed works.

Balanchine was invited to tour Germany in 1924 as part of the Soviet State Dancers, and at the completion of the tour refused to return to the Soviet Union and remained in Europe. He later joined the impresario Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes. After Diaghilev’s most famous choreographer, Nijinska, left the group, Balanchine took her place. At the age of 21 he became the main choreographer of the most famous ballet company in the world. Balanchine did ten ballets for Diaghilev, who insisted that Balanchivadze be changed to Balanchine.

In addition to the major works with Diaghilev, Balanchine also worked with composers such as Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, and artists who designed sets and costumes, such as Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse, creating new works that combined all the arts. In 1928 in Paris, Balanchine premiered one of his most innovative ballets, Apollon musagète (Apollo and the muses) in collaboration with Stravinsky combining classical ballet and classical Greek myth and images with jazz movement. He described it as the turning point in his life. Balanchine considered music to be the primary influence on choreography, as opposed to the narrative.

Following the collapse of the Ballet Russes, Balanchine moved from one company to another until he formed his own company, Les Ballets. The American dance aficionado and arts patron Lincoln Kirstein, who wanted to establish a ballet company in America with American dancers, approached Balanchine about collaboration and the two began a 50-year creative partnership, co-founding the School of American Ballet in 1934, less than three months after Balanchine’s arrival in the U.S. The following year, the professional company known as the American Ballet emerged, becoming the official company of New York’s Metropolitan Opera until 1936.

In 1946 Kirstein and Balanchine established a new company, the Ballet Society. The performance of Balanchine’s Orpheus was so successful that his company was invited to establish permanent residence at the New York City Center, which it did and was renamed the New York City Ballet. Balanchine finally had a school, a company, and a permanent theater. He developed the New York City Ballet into the leading classical company in America—and, to some critics, in the world.

Balanchine served as artistic director of the company, based out of New York State Theater at Lincoln Center. He produced more than 150 works for the company, including “The Nutcracker.” in which he played the mime role of Drosselmeyer. The company has since performed the ballet every year in New York City during the Christmas season. With the School of American Ballet and later with the New York City Ballet, Balanchine established himself as one of the world’s leading classical choreographers. Almost single-handedly he brought standards of excellence and quality performance to the American ballet, which up to that point had been merely a weak copy of the great European companies.

In addition to ballet, Balanchine choreographed Hollywood movies and Broadway musicals. He is known for his connection to Igor Stravinsky, where Balanchine created many ballets to his work, some in collaboration with the composer. Over his prolific career, he made over 460 works, which have been performed by nearly every ballet company in the world.

Balanchine created plotless ballets, where the dancing upstaged glitz and storytelling. His work didn’t feature a star, because he believed the performance should outshine the individual. He is credited with developing the neo-classical style distinct to the 20th century. Balanchine’s choreography was dependent on pure dance rather than on the ballerina, plot, or the sets. The drama was in the dance, and movement was solely related to the music. For Balanchine the movement of the body alone created artistic excitement. He placed great importance on balance, control, precision, and ease of movement. He rejected the traditional sweet style of romantic ballet, as well as the more acrobatic style of theatrical ballet, in favor of a style that was stripped to its essentials—motion, movement, and music. His dancers became instruments of the choreographer, whose ideas and designs came from the music itself.

Balanchine served as the artistic director of the New York City Ballet until his death, in April 1983, in New York City. The night of his death, the company went on with its scheduled performance, at Lincoln Center. Clement Crisp, one of the many writers who eulogized Balanchine, assessed his contribution: “It is hard to think of the ballet world without the colossal presence of George Balanchine …”

Balanchine was honored numerous times in his career. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983. President Ronald Reagan praised Balanchine’s genius saying he had “inspired millions with his stage choreography… and amazed a diverse population through his talents. In 1975, the Entertainment Hall of Fame in Hollywood inducted Balanchine as a member, in a nationally televised special. He was the first choreographer to be so honored. He also received the Kennedy Center Honors (1978), Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (1980), National Museum of Dance’s Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame (1987 posthumously) and Induction into the American Theater Hall of Fame (1988). He appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1954. A monument at the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theatre was dedicated in Balanchine’s memory. A crater on the planet Mercury was named in his honor. Summing up his career in the New York Times, Anna Kisselgoff said, “More than anyone else, he elevated choreography in ballet to an independent art. In an age when ballet had been dependent on a synthesis (combination) of spectacle, storytelling, décor, mime, acting and music, and only partly on dancing, George Balanchine insisted that the dance element come first.”

Petre Kvedelidze tirelessly promoted the rich culture of his homeland from the time he arrived in America in 1956 until his passing in 2014 at the age of 95.   He wanted Americans to learn and appreciate the history and nationalism of the Georgian people.  He took a special interest in helping new Georgian immigrants assimilate into the United States, and shared with them his values and how they should keep their Georgian identity alive.  He also encouraged them to embrace and serve the United States, to respect its values, and embrace future immigrants, as he had embraced them.  He was once referred to as the heart and soul of the Georgian diaspora in Washington.

Petre’s strong nationalism was influenced early in his life. A few months before his birth in Tbilisi in 1918, the Russian Empire, which had ruled Georgia for over a century, had fallen, making way for a free Georgia.  This freedom lasted less than three years when in early 1921, the newly formed Soviet Union invaded, and ultimately defeated Georgian resistance. The democratic government fled, and a communist government, sympathetic to Moscow was installed, followed by full integration into the Soviet Union in 1924. These events influenced Petre’s life, values, and character.  The Kvedelidze family was vehemently anti-communist, anti-Russian, and had a very strong love of Georgia. These views were instilled in Petre, and would shape him for life.

He was called to the Red Army in 1939 for his military service and first served in a regiment of Georgian recruits.  He was assigned as an interpreter with Russian-speaking officers, and was sent to Ukraine and Bessarabia. A few days after the declaration of the German-Russian war in June 1941, his detachment was captured by the Romanian army and handed over to the German army. He was placed in a prisoner-of-war camp in Romania, where he would stay for the next nine months.

He enlisted in the German army as did many of the Georgians captured by the Germans because they wanted to free their homeland from the Soviets, and not because they believed in the German cause. While fighting in the German army, Petre was badly injured. He was evacuated first to occupied Warsaw, and then to Munich for rehabilitation. After the German surrender in May 1945, the US Army offered the Georgians a choice to return to Russia or go to France.  Most of the Georgians chose not to return to Russia for fear of reprisals, so Petre and other Georgians went to France which today has a large Georgian community.

Once in France, Petre saw similarities to the Russian-backed communist aggression against Georgia to the communist aggression against France’s colonies in Southeast Asia. Petre enlisted in the French Foreign Legion where there were already some Georgian officers. He was deployed to Africa, and after a few months was sent to Southeast Asia to fight against anti-French communist factions. During this war, Petre suffered his second major combat injury, which required rehabilitation for nearly three years.

After his rehabilitation in France, Petre decided to immigrate to America which he viewed as having the best political system in the world.  He came to America in 1956, became a US citizen in 1963, and joined the Georgian desk of the Voice of America in 1967 where he served as a sports correspondent.  He later worked in a broader role at VOA, translating English news into Georgian for radio broadcasts, eventually becoming an on-air correspondent covering American culture and politics until his retirement in 1985.  In his retirement years he continued to meet with his numerous Georgian and American friends, often at his favorite kabob restaurant in Arlington.

In the last few years of his life, Petre took a special interest in visiting soldiers from the Georgian army who were undergoing rehabilitation at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.  The soldiers were recovering from serious wounds suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan while supporting American and other Coalition military forces. He celebrated his 95^th birthday at the center with them.  Petre was proud that a small country was making such a sacrifice of their young men.  Additional information about Georgia’s support to the U.S military is described in a separate posting on this website.

Upon his passing, his body was flown to Tbilisi, and laid to rest with a traditional Georgian Orthodox funeral attended by approximately 150 people at the prominent Didubis Panteoni. Some of the soldiers that met Petre at Walter Reed had already returned to Georgia and were in attendance.  His wish to return to Georgia and be buried there was fulfilled. Petre will be remembered for his kindness, hospitality, dignity, refined manners, and most of all for his love of Georgia and its people.

George Matchabeli was a Georgian nobleman, diplomat and an American perfumer. He was born in Tbilisi in July 1885 and is a descendant of the princely family of Machabeli, from the Tskhinvali area, currently known as the South Ossetian province of Georgia, today occupied by the Russian army. He studied in the Tbilisi College of Nobles and later in the Royal Academy at Berlin, where he was interested in mining engineering.  He was one of the founding members of the Committee of Independent Georgia organized in Berlin in 1914. The Committee intended to garner German support for Georgia’s struggle for independence from the Russian Empire.

In 1917 Matchabeli married Italian Norina Gilli who had become famous for her portrayal of the Madonna in Max Reinhardt’s unique 1911 pantomime spectacle play The Miracle. He briefly served as the Georgian ambassador to Italy until the establishment of Soviet rule in Georgia in 1921.  He and his wife then moved to the United States. Mr. Matchabeli wanted American citizenship, but wasn’t willing to relinquish the glamour of his title as Prince, so he petitioned for the right to use the title as his first name. So from 1934 onward, he was Mr. Prince Matchabeli. The prince was an amateur chemist who began creating perfumes for his friends and family as a hobby.  In 1924 he and his wife, now known as Princess Norina Matchabeli, established the Prince Matchabeli Perfume Company.  Norina designed the crown shaped perfume vial in the likeness of the Matchabeli crown.  His first employees were all fellow exiled aristocrats. One Georgian writer of the time remembered them as the most courteous staff in the United States and the prince himself was a perfect spokesman for his product. He had a reputation for exquisite manners and refined appearance, ideal for selling perfume to American women. In 1928, Matchabeli’s perfumes were awarded the Grand Prix with gold medal at the expositions in Paris and Liege for their quality and originality.

George Matchabeli was one of the founders of the Georgian Association in the United States and served as President of the association from 1932 until his passing in 1935.  He died in his home in New York and was buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Queens.

The Georgian Association in the United States will launch a series of short biographical sketches showcasing some of the more illustrious members of the Georgian diaspora. Our first profile is Irakli Orbeliani, the first director of the Georgian Service in the Voice of America and one of the co-founders of the Georgian Association in the USA in 1932.

Irakli Orbeliani, who was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, on November 14, 1901, came from one of the most illustrious families in Georgia. Beginning from the 6th century AD, the princely house of Orbeliani gave to Georgia a remarkably large number of distinguished men: statesmen, soldiers, ambassadors, scientists, writers and poets. Irakli’s mother, the Princess Elisabeth of the Royal House of Georgia, Bagrationi, was the direct descendent of Georgian kings and throughout her life was a bitter, active and open enemy of the Russian rule of Georgia.  Irakli’s father, Prince Mamuka Orbeliani, was an officer in the Russian Imperial Guards, who gave up his commission and refused to serve the Russian tsar upon the exile of his wife for her opposition to Russia’s rule over Georgia.

Irakli was a great musical talent who performed many concerts in Europe and the United States before ill health forced him to give up his musical career. By then he had emigrated and become a citizen of the United States. In 1950 he accepted a request by the USG and became head of the Georgian Service of the Voice of America. Later he was appointed Chief of the South USSR Branch which comprised Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaidjani,,Turko-Tartar and Turkestani services. When the later three services were abolished in 1953, Irakli reverted to the Head of the Georgian Service where he remained until he died in March, 1954. The Georgian community in the U.S. at the time greatly mourned his loss lauding his brilliance and great personal charm. *

*taken from The Voice of Free Georgia, Vol. 5, April, 1954