Qadiyev was born on 9 April 1937 to a Crimean Tatar family in Crimea. His family strongly supported the Soviet Union; his mother Selime was a Komsomol activist since the early days of the union, and his parents named him Rollan in honor of Romain Rolland, a French writer and outspoken supporter of Stalin. The family tried to flee from advancing German troops during the invasion of Crimea, but were enable to evacuate the peninsula in time, forcing them to live quietly and hope to remain unnoticed until the Red Army returned. Despite their loyalty to the Soviet government, they were still subject to exile, and when he was a young child he was violently awakened early one May morning when a soldier who pointed a bayonet in his face; his family, like other Crimean Tatars, were subsequently given very little time to get dressed and pack a few belongings they could carry before being deported to Central Asia. The family arrived in Samarkand, where they lived in exile for decades.