John Shalikashvili

His father, Prince Dimitri Shalikashvili (1896–1978), born in Gurjaani, served in the army of Imperial Russia and his wife, Countess Maria Rüdiger-Belyaeva.

Dimitri was a grandson of Russian general Dmitry Staroselsky.

After the Bolshevik Revolution, Dimitri became a lieutenant colonel in the army of the Democratic Republic of Georgia.

When the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Georgia in 1921, Dimitri was on diplomatic service in Turkey.

Dimitri then joined other Georgian exiles in Poland, where he met and married John's mother, Maria; she was Polish and of part German ancestry, and the daughter of Count Rudiger-Bielajew (Rüdiger-Belyaev), a former Tsarist general.

They had three children: Othar, John and Gale.

Dimitri served in the Polish Army (along with other Georgian exiles) as a contract officer.

John Malchase David Shalikashvili (ჯონ მალხაზ დავით შალიკაშვილი, ; June 27, 1936 – July 23, 2011) was a United States Army general who served as Supreme Allied Commander Europe from 1992 to 1993 and the 13th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1993 to 1997.

He was born in Warsaw, Poland, in the family of émigré Georgian officer Dimitri Shalikashvili and his Polish wife Maria Rüdiger-Belyaeva.

In 1939, the elder Shalikashvili fought against the German invasion of Poland.

After the Polish defeat, Dimitri was demobilized.

In 1941, he enlisted in the Georgian Legion, a force of ethnic Georgians recruited by Germany to fight against the Soviet Union.

The unit was later incorporated into the SS-Waffengruppe Georgien and transferred to Normandy.

Dimitri surrendered to British forces and was a prisoner of war until after the war.

A collection of Dimitri Shalikashvili's writings are on deposit at the Hoover Institution.

Meanwhile, Maria, John and his two brothers lived through the destruction of Warsaw.

As the Red Army approached Warsaw in 1944, the family fled to Pappenheim, Germany, being reunited with Dimitri along the way.

It was in Pappenheim in the closing days of World War II that John first laid eyes on U.S. soldiers.

His family stayed with relatives there in Pappenheim for eight years.

In 1952, when Shalikashvili was 16, the family emigrated to the US, and settled in Peoria, Illinois.

They were sponsored by Winifred Luthy, the wife of a local banker, who was previously married to Dimitri's cousin.

The Luthys and the Episcopal Church helped the Shalikashvili family get started, finding jobs and a home for them.

Dimitri worked for Ameren, and Maria was a file clerk at Commercial National Bank.

When Shalikashvili arrived in Peoria he spoke little English:

"I spoke a little bit [of English]. But not much beyond yes and no and what time is it. And the stories that subsequently have been told that I learned English by watching John Wayne movies is only a little bit of a stretch ... As school was over [at Peoria High School], I would run to the local movie theater. There I would sit through movies in order to learn English. In those days movies didn't start at a specific time and end at a specific time, but they would roll continuously ... The first time through it wouldn't make much sense to me. But the second time through, it would begin to make a little more sense. Now in my memory, that is probably very faulty, a lot of those movies were John Wayne movies or at least were Wild West movies."

Shalikashvili went to Peoria High School, where he was a long-distance runner.

He attended Bradley University in Peoria and received a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1958.

He was a member of Theta Chi.

In May 1958, Shalikashvili and his family became U.S. citizens.

It was the first nationality he ever held.

He had previously been classified as stateless because he had been born to parents who had been refugees.

After graduation Shalikashvili had planned to work for Hyster, but received a draft notice in July 1958.

He entered the United States Army as a private, enjoyed it, and applied to the Army's Officer Candidate School.

He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1959.

In 1970, Shalikashvili received a master's degree in international affairs from the George Washington University's School of International Affairs.

In 1996, he was the first recipient of the Naval War College Distinguished Graduate Leadership Award.

Shalikashvili was the first, and as of 2023 only, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff not born in the United States.

He served in every level of unit command from platoon to division.

Shalikashvili died of a stroke in 2011 at the age of 75.

Shalikashvili was a scion of the medieval Georgian noble house of Shalikashvili.