Kazbegi-Dadiani Family Papers

This collection documents the history of two prominent Georgian aristocratic families, the Dadianis and the Kazbegis, from their heyday of influence and power in 19th-century Russian Empire through decades of exile following the Bolshevik Revolution. 

The collection's protagonists are three generations of women: Nina Dadiani (1894-1962), her daughter Marina Kazbegi (1916-1999), and Marina's daughter Nina von Moltke (1943-2018). After the revolutions of 1917 in Russia, Nina and her daughter emigrated through Silesia to Paris before settling in Berlin. In 1953, all three women immigrated to the United States, where they joined an influential and vibrant Georgian diaspora. (Learn more about the Georgian diaspora from the Davis Center.)

The materials capture the families’ close ties with the Russian Imperial family and their attachment to their ancestral homes, their lives in Tbilisi and St. Petersburg in the early 1900's, and members' divergent trajectories after 1917. 

The collection includes unpublished memoirs and biographical materials, correspondence, official court, government, and inheritance documents, a family tree, clippings, ephemera, and photographs. Visual materials — including 70 photographs and four photograph albums — have been digitized and are accessible online.