Kutateladze's parents divorced when he was four, and he was raised by his mother, Aleksandra Vladimirovna, an obstetric nurse. His father, Semen Samsonovich, had been a nobleman; he was before the Great October Revolution a student at Petrograd University and then an army officer. He was arrested in 1937 and died in a camp near Novosibirsk. Following the divorce, Kutateladze and his mother lived for a few years in Georgia, returning in 1922 to Petrograd.