Born of a petty noble family in a small village of Baji in western Georgia, then part of the Russian Empire, Svanidze was educated at Tiflis and later at Jena where he learned German and English and engaged in historical research of ancient civilizations.

At the same time, Svanidze continued his scholarship; he founded the Journal of Ancient History, studied the Alarodian languages, and translated into Russian the medieval Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli.

Svanidze refused to confess to being a German spy in return, as the NKVD offered him, for his life.

[4] His wife Maria (née Korona; 1889–1941), a singer for the Tbilisi Opera House, was sentenced to ten years in Dolinskoye, a women's prison camp in Kazakhstan.

[5] His son, Ivan (born Dzhonrid in honour of John Reed) was married to Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva from 1957 to 1959.