Pavel Durov lives here. The real Pavel Durov: the secrets of his biography have been revealed. Pavel Durov left Russia

29.12.2023

Who is Pavel Durov? The biography and personal life of this person is of interest to hundreds of thousands of people.

Now this wave of curiosity is fueled by the firm position of the founder of VKontakte in relation to the intelligence services: as is known, he refused to provide the authorities with keys for decrypting user correspondence in Telegram.This is worthy of at least respect.

We invite you to delve a little deeper into Pavel’s life and find out how his beliefs were formed and what other good things Durov did for you and me.

And at the end of the article you will find bonus- interesting facts from Pasha’s biography and some interesting rumors about him.

Biography of Pavel Durov: childhood

Pasha in childhood

His father was a doctor of philology, and his mother was studying to be a journalist at that time.

Pasha's older brother, Nikolai, loved mathematics from early childhood, and subsequently helped a lot in the development and support of Vkontakte and Telegram.

Older brother - Nikolai Durov

Pasha started first grade in Italy. The family moved to Turin because of his father's work project.

Father - Valery Semenovich Durov

By the way, in addition to Italian, Pavel also speaks English, German, French, Spanish and one of the dead languages - Latin.

After 2 years, the Durovs returned to the USSR, and Pasha attended a regular secondary school for several years.

In 1996 he entered the Academic Gymnasium at the State University in St. Petersburg.

There Pasha began to study several foreign languages in depth and became interested in programming.

His classmates considered him a silent, unsociable boy who always kept to himself.

Interesting biography fact: one day Pasha was punished for his trick with school computers. Durov changed the screensaver on all PCs to a photograph of a school teacher with an unflattering inscription.

As a result, the boy was deprived of access to computers, but he still managed to crack passwords.

Youth and students

In 2001, the future creator of everyone’s favorite social network graduated from the educational institution with excellent marks and entered the St. Petersburg State University.

At the university, Pasha’s other qualities also emerged: in addition to his studies, he managed to organize various events and eventually became one of the best students at St. Petersburg State University with the highest level of intelligence and leadership abilities.

While studying at the university, Pasha managed to create 2 small non-profit projects:

Website for studentsdurov.com.

It was a platform for the exchange of opinions and a place where one could read abstracts.

The website for St. Petersburg State University students became Pavel’s first major development

ForumSpbgu.ru.

Here students argued, expressed their opinions about their studies, and shared their thoughts. It often happened that in order to create activity on the forum, Durov created “leftist” accounts and argued with himself.

Pavel graduated from the university in 2006, receiving the highest scores in all subjects.

Interesting biography fact: The education document remained at the university; the future creator of VK did not take it.

In contact with

Many site users remained anonymous and used nicknames to communicate. It turned out that two classmates might not even realize that they were arguing with each other on the forum.

At this time, Pasha’s friend, Vyacheslav Mirilashvili, came from abroad and talked about the American social network Facebook, which the students used.

Pavel found this idea interesting: users of this project indicated real names when registering and published photographs.

Immediately after graduating from university, Pavel began to implement his idea. The resulting project bore the discreet but targeted name “Student.ru”, and was later renamed “Vkontakte”.

VKontakte logo

In the fall of 2006, a domain of the same name was registered and the site went live. At first, it was possible to get on the social network only by invitation, but later Durov abandoned this, and anyone could register.

VKontakte began to develop by leaps and bounds. By 2007, the number of users on the network exceeded 20 million. In the same year, the founder of VK becomes the best young entrepreneur.

Pavel began to receive offers to sell VK, but he rejected them. Instead, the businessman decided to attract investment in the project.

The first deal took place with the chairman of Digital Sky Technologies. After some time, he resold his shares to Mail.ru Group.

In 2008, the site was monetized, after which Pavel was able to afford to rent an office in the Singer house on Nevsky Prospekt.

The same Singer house

Durov himself lived in a rented apartment next to the office, in which any employee could stay overnight if necessary.

Colleagues said that Pavel did not show up at work until lunch, but he always worked until late.

The difficult fate of VKontakte and departure abroad

In 2011, the head of Mail.ru Group, Dmitry Grishin, informs Durov that he plans to acquire 100% of the shares of the social network. Negotiations lasted almost two weeks.

Pavel conveyed his decision to Dmitry creatively: on Instagram he posted a photo with an eloquent gesture, making it clear that the deal would not happen.

This incident caused discontent among other co-owners of the company. They jointly sold their shares in UCP (this is one of the investment funds) without saying a word to Pavel.

In 2014, the businessman sold the remaining 12% of his shares and sold off his personal property. The new owner of the shares was Megafon CEO Ivan Tavrin.

Subsequently, they were bought by Mail.ru Group, and this company is now the sole owner of everyone’s favorite VK.

In the same year, the first clash between the founder of the social network and the authorities occurred.

The Prosecutor General's Office demanded the closure of Navalny's anti-corruption community and open access to the data of the Euromaidan organizers. Pasha refused, and he had to pay a visit to the prosecutor's office.

On April 1, the businessman announced that he was resigning from the post of general director of the social network he created. However, he later published a message saying that it was an April Fool's joke.

But the new leadership of the VK was determined, and on April 21 Durov was relieved of his post.

The same post about the mysterious dismissal

On April 22, the founder of VK left the country, saying that it was impossible to conduct an Internet business in Russia. Finally, he published a small list of the conditions under which he will return to the country.

Among such conditions are open courts, abolition of VAT, simple laws and other interesting thoughts.

In 2011, Durov begins work on creating a messenger.

They say that the idea of secure correspondence occurred to him at the moment when special forces soldiers were standing at his door. They came to search his apartment when a wave of protests against the government swept across Russia.

In 2013, Telegram became available for download in the AppStore. This messenger is gradually becoming more and more popular not only in the world, but also in Russia. According to preliminary data, in 2018 there are already about 200 million users.

Despite its universal popularity, Telegram also cannot boast of a simple fate. The government drew attention to the messenger back in 2015, and since then has been trying in every possible way to prevent its distribution and operation.

The official version of the State Duma’s dislike for the messenger is that the application is allegedly used by terrorists. However, the developers and team did not previously refuse to block groups and chats related to the Islamic State group banned in the Russian Federation.

The only thing Durov does not want to do is provide data on user correspondence to third parties. And this only benefits us.

“Threats to block Telegram if it does not agree to give up the personal data of its users will not bear any fruit. Telegram will support freedom and privacy"

In 2016, Russia adopted the Yarovaya Law, which obliges instant messengers to hand over keys to decrypt user correspondence to intelligence agencies. Telegram did not transmit any data, so in 2017 he was fined 800 thousand rubles.

In 2018, the story of Durov’s confrontation with the Russian special services received a new development. Roskomnadzor warned the owner of the messenger that if he does not hand over the encryption keys, the messenger will be blocked in Russia.

Pasha again refused, and as a result, on April 16, Internet providers stopped providing access to the application. But a solution was found. Telegram developers began to introduce built-in proxies, and users learned about VPN.

On April 22, an action of opposition to Roskomnadzor took place: everyone who disagreed with the blocking decision launched paper airplanes from the windows. And on April 30, a rally in defense of the free Internet was held in Moscow, which was attended by more than 12 thousand people.

Telegram support campaign

2018 is the time for new discoveries in Telegram. Not long ago, the Gram cryptocurrency appeared and a blockchain platform called TON was launched.

The platform is currently being actively debugged, which should ultimately become a powerful tool with a built-in payment system and various cloud services.

Life abroad

Paul's biography now continues in Europe. Having invested several hundred thousand dollars in the economy of the country of Saint Kitts and Nevis, one becomes its full citizen.

Passport of Pavel Durov

Now Pavel travels to different cities and countries, never staying anywhere for long. Together with him is his team of developers who are working to support and improve Telegram.

The real whereabouts of Pavel Durov are unknown, but you can follow his life on Instagram.

One of the photos on Durov’s Instagram account

Personal life

Pavel does not illuminate this point in his biography. According to him, he has never been married and is in no hurry to start a family, as he considers it a tool for suppressing personality.

Only one relationship is known for certain about Durov - a long time ago he met with Daria Bondarenko, at that time a journalism student. Some yellow newspapers write that this particular woman may be the carefully hidden wife of the former owner of the social network VK and the mother of their two children.

It is also known that when he was the general director of VK, Pasha celebrated his birthdays on a grand scale. They usually invited dozens of top models.

Criticism of Durov

Many are grateful to the creator of a safe and super secure messenger. But there are also those who are ready to criticize. Let us recall several controversial moments in Paul’s biography.

1) Many people still did not understand the act of the creator of VK and Telegram, which he and his top managers performed on the city’s birthday in 2012. Then Durov launched paper airplanes with five thousand dollar bills attached to them out the window.

Photos from the scene

Soon a crowd gathered under the windows, and things even came to a fight. As Pavel later admitted, he did this to create a festive mood for people. About two thousand dollars were thrown out the window.

This event was immediately followed by a reaction from bloggers and media personalities. Many did not understand what Paul's true goal was and perceived his act as a mockery of people.

2) The second controversial act was committed by the founder of VK also in 2012, on May 9. Pavel published a tweet in which he said that on this significant day, “Stalin defended Hitler’s right to repress the population.”

A wave of negativity and criticism arose again. And Nikolai Valuev even announced the closure of his VKontakte account as a sign of protest. Later, the VK press secretary explained Pavel’s words by saying that Durov’s grandfather was undeservedly repressed, having honestly gone through the entire war.

3) In 2013, a new scandalous event occurred. The creator of a popular social network violated traffic rules and hit a traffic police officer who intended to stop him.

Operational footage

As a result, the policeman received abrasions and bruises, and a criminal case was opened against the creator of VK under Article 318. A little later, however, it was closed due to insufficient evidence to prove intentional harm.

Worldview

The founder of VK reflected all his views in his farewell message before leaving Russia and becoming a citizen of Saint Kitts and Nevis.

On his VKontakte page, Pavel wrote that he would return to the country only if:

courts will become fair, and judges themselves will be able to be appointed by people, not officials;

the laws will be fair and correct, and not excessive and contradictory;

elections will become open, and it will be possible to get a job in government positions through a competition;

VAT will be abolished using export revenues;

regions will stop sending cash flows to Moscow and will become autonomous and self-sufficient;

the education system will cease to be formulaic and give way to experimental programs.

The creator of VK himself calls his views libertarian. The most important thing in life is freedom, the businessman believes. This is probably why Telegram exists, where you can communicate without worrying about security or paying for tariffs, stickers and bots.

Screenshot from the official page of Pavel Durov on VKontakte

The former owner of VK completely gave up meat and is a vegetarian.

In 2017, on his next birthday, Durov told the world about those things that can negatively affect a person. He included all types of drugs (including tobacco and alcohol), sugar, coffee, tea and carbonated and tonic drinks.

Pasha has completely given up these substances and does not watch TV, as it has a negative effect on consciousness.

If we talk about philosophical and religious views, the founder of the social network is more inclined towards Taoism and Buddhism.

Although sometimes he jokingly calls himself a Pastafarian (this is a parody religion, whose followers jokingly worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster).

Rumors and interesting facts from biography

Here we will tell you about some interesting confirmed facts from the biography of the legendary businessman, and at the very end of the article we will throw you some unconfirmed rumors. Who knows, maybe there is some truth in them, as is often the case.

The former owner of VK is known for his directness and rudeness.

When Sergei Lazarev threatened to sue the social network because his tracks could be listened to for free through the player, the creator of Vkontate simply deleted all of Sergei’s songs.

And when trying to play any track, the user saw an inscription stating that the composition had been deleted because it did not carry any cultural value.

Tweet about the reason for deleting Lazarev's tracks

The only more or less reliable source describing Pasha’s life is a book about him.

Here Nikolai Kononov collected not only biographical facts, but also outlined interviews with people from the businessman’s inner circle. The book was supposed to be made into a film in 2017, but filming has been suspended for now.

The creator of VK knows how to not only press keyboard buttons. Pavel has the rank of reserve lieutenant.

In 2011, the businessman’s fortune was estimated at almost 8 billion rubles. He was the 350th Russian billionaire.

Also in 2011, Forbes included the creator of VKontakte in the list of nine unusual Russian businessmen.

This was influenced by the indecent gesture with which Pasha responded to the head of mail.ru in response to his proposal to buy up all the shares of the VK social network.

The project with the Gram cryptocurrency has already brought the creator a round sum (more than 850 million rubles).

TON logo

At the time of the creation of VK, the businessman was 22 years old. VKontakte and Pasha were born on the same day, October 10.

Pavel is short - only 176 cm.

In 2012, the founder of the social network took 42nd place in the list of the most cited Russian bloggers.

The businessman donated $1 million to the development of the Wikimedia Foundation (yes, it includes everyone’s favorite Wikipedia).

The VK logo was created by the founder of the social network in just three minutes using the regular Tahoma font.

Telegram is being developed using Durov’s personal funds.

Pavel does not plan to pay salaries to developers using investors' funds.

The favorite color of the creator of VK is black.

Almost the entire wardrobe of a businessman consists of black things.

The creator of Telegram is part of the community of the smartest people on the planet.

Members Mensa International are people whose level of intelligence exceeds that of other people.

Only 2% of the world's population has such mental abilities. Their IQ is much higher than the rest.

Let’s finish with the facts from the biography and see what the yellow newspapers attribute to Pasha.

They write that the founder of VK is generally not indifferent to models, and one of his close friends in 2017 was Alena Shishkova.

They say that Pavel owns the game “Happy Farmer,” which annually brings him about 10 billion rubles in profit.

Many believe that the businessman had several plastic surgeries to add hair extensions and change the shape of his ears and cheekbones.

It is believed that Pavel and Daria Bondarenko have two children.

Telegram was rumored to have nearly sold to Google for $1 billion in 2015.

Do you like Pavel Durov?

Pavel Valerievich Durov- Russian programmer, dollar billionaire, one of the creators of the social network VKontakte and the company of the same name, the cross-platform messenger Telegram and other projects. Former General Director of VKontakte (2006-2014).

Place of Birth. Education. Pavel Durov was born in Leningrad on October 10, 1984 into an intelligent family. Father - Doctor of Philology Valery Semyonovich Durov, author of many scientific works, has headed the Department of Classical Philology of the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University since 1992. He went to the first grade of school while in Turin, where his father worked for several years. Returning to his hometown, Pavel briefly studied at a regular school and entered the experimental classes of the Academic Gymnasium (now Mednikov’s Academic Classes), which provides in-depth study of all subjects, including four foreign languages. At the age of 11, he first became interested in programming.

In 2001 he graduated from the Academic Gymnasium with honors. In 2002, Pavel entered the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University, majoring in English Philology and Translation. For his academic achievements and contribution to student life at the university, he was awarded a scholarship from the government of the Russian Federation, and then a scholarship from the President of the Russian Federation. Pavel was a three-time winner of the Potanin Scholarship, and was also one of a select number of St. Petersburg State University students with the highest level of intelligence and leadership abilities. He won competitions in computer science, linguistics and design, and organized university-wide events. Pavel graduated from the university in 2006 with honors (which he never took).

In contact with. Even while studying at St. Petersburg State University, Pavel created non-profit Internet projects designed to improve the quality of social and scientific life of the university. These projects were the sites Durov.com and Spbgu.ru.

But by the summer of 2006, he realized that his student websites, despite all their popularity, were ineffective in uniting students, since many hid their names under nicknames and their real faces under avatars: students could communicate with each other online without even realizing it. that they study in the same group. Then he started looking for another form for the student website. Later, Pavel’s old friend, who returned from the USA after studying, introduced him to an Internet project for American university students - Facebook, where users posted their real names and photographs on their profiles. Durov decided to introduce a similar website concept in Russia, that is, real people under real names. The original name of the future project - "Student.ru" - was replaced by Pavel on VKontakte, since, according to him, "sooner or later we all become graduates." He started implementing it immediately after graduating from university.

Pavel and his brother, Nikolai Durov, founded the limited liability company VKontakte and launched a beta version of the network of the same name, whose domain - vkontakte.ru - was, according to official data, registered on October 1, 2006. At first the site was closed, in other words, it was possible to register only after a personal invitation. But at the end of the year registration became free. The rapidly growing number of users forced the creators to change servers and improve software support for the network. Pavel repeatedly received offers to buy his product, but he rejected them. Instead, the programmer attracted investors to his project. VKontakte developed before our eyes. Already in 2007, it became the third most popular site on the Runet; in 2008, the network was monetized, and the number of users exceeded 20 million.

As of 2011, Durov, with a fortune of 7.9 billion rubles, occupied 350th place in the ranking of Russian billionaires.

On April 16, Pavel Durov announced that on December 13, 2013, the FSB demanded that the network’s management hand over the personal information of the organizers of the Euromaidan groups, to which he refused. For this, according to Durov, he had to sacrifice a lot, including his share of VKontakte. According to him, Russia’s jurisdiction does not extend to Ukrainian users of the social network VKontakte and dissemination of data from Ukrainian users would not only be a violation of the law, but also a crime against millions of users from Ukraine.

In January 2014, it became known that Pavel Durov sold his stake (12%) in the VKontakte company to the CEO of MegaFon, Ivan Tavrin. In March, Mail.Ru Group bought this share from Ivan Tavrin, thus concentrating 52% of the shares of VKontakte; 48% belongs to the United Capital Partners fund.

On April 21, 2014, Durov announced that he was fired from his position as CEO of the social network. The next day, he announced that he had left Russia, did not intend to return, and was going to create a new mobile social network. According to the founder of VKontakte, “at the moment the country [Russia] is not compatible with doing business on the Internet.”

Durov constantly moves from country to country, never staying in one for more than two or three weeks. Together with him in Paris , Singapore and his team of programmers, with whom he develops the messenger, travels to other cities Telegram . Pavel reported that he was not a fan of the idea of the state. "Now I am very happy, living without any property and considering myself citizen of the world." In addition to the Russian one, he has a passport from the state of Saint Kitts and Nevis , he received this passport after investing in the country's economy.

Telegram. On August 14, 2013, the first Telegram client for iOS devices was introduced. The application is positioned as protected from surveillance by intelligence agencies and the possibility of gaining illegal access to the data of its users. The service is built on MTProto correspondence encryption technology, developed by Pavel’s brother Nikolai.

The number of monthly active users of the service as of the end of March 2018 is more than 200 million people. In August 2017, in his Telegram channel, Pavel Durov reported that the number of users was increasing by more than 600 thousand daily.

On April 16, 2018, Roskomnadzor began restricting access to Telegram in Russia.

On April 18, 2018, Russian media reported the true reason for blocking Telegram.

Views. Pavel Durov adheres to libertarian political views and is also a vegetarian. He advocates reform of the Russian educational system; abolition of taxes in the field of information; abolition of the visa system, registration and military conscription; reduction of customs duties; granting regions full autonomy; and also for the openness of jury trials. He is inspired by Ernesto Che Guevara and Steve Jobs, and according to his religious beliefs, he is, according to some sources, a Pastafarian, according to others, a supporter of the Zen school.

On October 10, 2017, on his birthday, Pavel Durov spoke about seven things that he gave up many years ago and which, in his opinion, negatively affect consciousness: alcohol; animal meat; tablets and any pharmaceutical products; nicotine and other drugs; coffee, black and green tea, energy drinks; fast food, sugar, carbonated drinks; television and its analogues.

Criticism and recognition. Durov is called Russian in the media , and is also often criticized for his eccentric antics and statements.

State. In 2016 and 2017, he was included in the Forbes list of 200 richest businessmen in Russia. In 2018, the magazine estimated his net worth at $1.7 billion.

Family. Father - Doctor of Philology Valery Semenovich Durov (born July 13, 1945), author of many scientific works, since 1992 has headed the Department of Classical Philology of the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University.

Mother - Albina Aleksandrovna Durova (born April 3, 1951) taught at St. Petersburg State University.

Brother - Nikolay (born November 21, 1980), mathematician, candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, multiple winner of Russian and international olympiads in mathematics and computer science, twice absolute world champion in programming among students, from the day of its foundation until mid-2013 he was the technical director In contact with.

In 2006, he graduated from the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University with a degree in English Philology and Translation with honors (which he still hasn’t taken). A year earlier, he completed professional training at the Faculty of Military Education of St. Petersburg State University with a specialization in Propaganda and Psychological Warfare, after which he received the rank of reserve lieutenant. Immediately after graduating from university, he created VKontakte, currently the largest social network in Russia. As of 2011, Durov, with a fortune of 7.9 billion rubles, occupied 350th place in the ranking of Russian billionaires.

Mother - Albina Aleksandrovna Durova.

Brother - Nikolai(born 1980), mathematician, candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, multiple winner of Russian and international olympiads in mathematics and computer science, twice absolute world champion in programming among students, from the day of its foundation until mid-2013 he was the technical director of VKontakte .

Half-brother - Mikhail Petrov, son of Albina Durova from her first marriage.

Pavel's grandfather, Semyon Petrovich Tulyakov (born 1913), participated in the Great Patriotic War. He served in the 65th Rifle Regiment, took part in battles on the Leningrad Front in the Krasnoborsk and Gatchina directions, and was wounded three times. He was nominated for the Order of the Red Star, awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, II degree, and on the 40th anniversary of the Victory, the Order of the Patriotic War, I degree. After the war was repressed [clarify] .

Biography

When I looked at people who commute to offices every day for routine work, I could not imagine such a scenario in my life. Managing Internet projects and organizing university events taught me independence and the idea that I had no direct superiors.

Even while studying at St. Petersburg State University, Pavel created non-profit Internet projects designed to improve the quality of social and scientific life of the university. These projects were the sites Durov.com and Spbgu.ru. The first project is an electronic library of university abstracts, as well as a place for students to exchange ideas and opinions; the second is the university forum, where Pavel often initiated various discussions, in which, using different accounts, he argued with himself. But by the summer of 2006, he realized that his student websites, despite all their popularity, were ineffective in uniting students, since many hid their names under nicknames and their real faces under avatars: students could communicate with each other online without even realizing it. that they study in the same group. Then he started looking for another form for the student website. Later, Pavel’s old friend, who returned from the USA after studying, introduced him to an Internet project for American university students - Facebook, where users posted their real names and photographs on their profiles. Durov decided to introduce a similar site concept in Russia, that is, real people under real names. The original name of the future project - “Student.ru” - was replaced by Pavel with “VKontakte”, since, according to him, “sooner or later we all become graduates.” He began implementation immediately after graduating from university. Pavel and his brother, Nikolai Durov, founded the limited liability company “VKontakte” and launched a beta version of the network of the same name, whose domain - vkontakte.ru - was, according to official data, registered on October 1, 2006. At first the site was closed, in other words, it was possible to register only after a personal invitation. But at the end of the year registration became free. Within a few days, the network attracted more than 2,000 users; the reason is a competition - an iPod for whoever invites the most friends. The rapidly growing number of users forced the creators to change servers and improve software support for the network. Pavel repeatedly received offers to buy his product, but he rejected them. Instead, the programmer attracted investors to his project. VKontakte was developing before our eyes. Already in 2007, it became the third most popular site on the Runet; in 2008, the network was monetized, and the number of users exceeded 20 million. In 2010, Pavel’s company moved into the Singer house, which is located on Nevsky Prospekt, opposite the Kazan Cathedral.

On May 27, 2012, top managers of VKontakte, led by Durov, threw airplanes with 5,000-ruble banknotes attached to them from the window of the company’s central office in St. Petersburg. Soon a crowd gathered under the windows and even started a fight for the money. Pavel later explained that with his action he wanted to create a festive atmosphere on City Day. Durov then scattered a total of about $2,000. The joy with which he watched the crowd's reaction was also reported. According to eyewitnesses, Pavel filmed what was happening on camera. While working at VKontakte, Pavel lived in a rented apartment next to the office, where, according to him, developers could stay overnight.

On April 5, 2013, it was reported that while driving a car, Durov turned left from Sadovaya Street to the embankment of the Moika River, violating the requirements of the road sign. The traffic police officer who noticed the offense tried to stop the car. The driver did not comply with the requirement, continuing to drive, and as a result hit the employee, causing him bruises and abrasions. Initially, the VKontakte press service denied Pavel’s involvement in the incident, pointing out that their general director did not have a car. In addition, the car itself belonged to the vice-president of the company Ilya Perekopsky. But in June, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for St. Petersburg proved that it was Durov who was driving. Immediately after the incident, a criminal case was opened against Pavel under an article of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (use of violence against a representative of authority), which, after an investigation, was closed in June 2013, and the offense itself fell under the article of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (disobedience to a lawful order of a police officer), so how the investigation did not collect sufficient evidence of the deliberate use of violence. In September 2013, it became known that the criminal case was returned for further investigation in order to establish the presence or absence of criminal intent in the actions of Pavel Durov. Evidence indicating that Durov’s actions were deliberate and aimed at using violence against the police officer was again not found by investigators, and at the beginning of 2014 the criminal case was again discontinued.

In February 2014, the United Capital Partners (UCP) Fund, which owns 48% of VKontakte shares, announced that it intends to defend its interests “in Russian and international jurisdictions.” UCP representatives accused Pavel Durov and Mail.ru Group employees of actions contrary to the interests of VK. The fund explained that they had previously tried to resolve the issues peacefully, but all proposals were blocked by representatives of Mail.ru Group and Megafon CEO Ivan Tavrin, who at that time owned a controlling stake in VK (52%). The UCP noted that this behavior of the VK co-owners “extremely surprises and worries them.”

Having exhausted all possibilities for a reasonable agreement, we transfer disputed cases on “VK” to legal companies. The brief essence of our complaints is that Pavel Durov and representatives of Mail.ru Group systematically made and continue to make decisions not in the best interests of VK...

In response, USM Advisors CEO Ivan Streshinsky accused UCP of systematic pressure on VK shareholders:

Since its declared entry into VKontakte, UCP has demonstrated a reluctance to build constructive relationships with other shareholders and the company’s management, preferring a strategy of threats, blackmail and intrigue. In particular, an entire campaign was organized to put legal pressure and publicly discredit the founder of VKontakte, Pavel Durov, with whom the UCP began communication with threats of lawsuits and criminal prosecution.

In contact with

“VKontakte” is the largest social network in Runet, the first most popular site in Belarus, the second in Russia, the third in Ukraine, the fifth in Kazakhstan, the 26th in the world, which is estimated at $1.5 billion. For example, in September 2012, the site's daily audience averaged 22 million people. As of September of the same year, more than 140 million users were registered on VKontakte. In terms of the speed of its growth, the social network has broken all Runet records. The network's major shareholder is Mail.Ru Group, a holding company that owns, as of April 2011, 32.49% of all VKontakte shares.

VKontakte provides financial support for developing Olympiad programming in Russia and sponsors teams of programmers in St. Petersburg and North-West Russia. Among the company's employees are the best Russian programmers, winners of international programming and mathematics competitions.

On January 24, 2014, it became known that in December 2013 Durov entered into a deal to sell his remaining 12% of VKontakte shares to Ivan Tavrin and ceased to be the owner of the network.

What you own sooner or later begins to own you.
I've been actively disposing of my possessions over the last few years, giving away and selling everything I owned, from furniture and belongings to real estate and companies. To achieve the ideal, all I had to do was get rid of the largest part of my property - a 12% share of VKontakte. I am glad that not so long ago I achieved this goal by selling my share of VKontakte to my friend Ivan Tavrin.
This change is unlikely to affect the management of VKontakte - the board of directors listens to my opinion not because of the presence or absence of my share, but because I created this network and understand its deep mechanisms. I’m not going anywhere and I’m going to continue to monitor the quality of VKontakte. In the end, VKontakte is the best thing that has been created in Russia in the communications field. And my responsibility is to take care and protect this network.

On April 1, Pavel Durov announced on his page his resignation from the post of General Director of VKontakte LLC, explaining this by a reduction in the available freedom of action, but then, on April 3, he withdrew his resignation letter. Then it turned out that this was not an April Fool's joke; on April 21, the owners of the social network VKontakte granted the resignation letter, which had previously been sent to them by the general director and founder of the network, Pavel Durov.

On August 14, 2013, the first Telegram client was introduced. In November, the program had, according to TJournal, about 1 million installations. In an interview with The New York Times, Pavel said that the initial idea for the application came to him back in 2011, when special forces came to his door. When the latter finally left, Durov immediately wrote to his brother Nikolai. It was then that he realized that he had no safe way to communicate with his brother. The service is built on MTProto correspondence encryption technology, developed by Pavel’s brother Nikolai.

In response to proposals from some officials to ban the messenger in Russia, on December 24, 2015, on his VKontakte page, Pavel Durov stated: “As for Telegram, the project has not and will not issue personal data and encryption keys to third parties. Messenger is popular among tens of millions of users in dozens of markets, and the threat of blocking in one or two of them will not affect its privacy policy."

Emigration

On April 16, Pavel Durov announced that on December 13, 2013, the FSB demanded that the network’s management hand over personal information of the organizers of the Euromaidan groups, to which he refused. In December, a deal was made to sell a stake in the company. According to him, Russian jurisdiction does not extend to Ukrainian users of the VKontakte social network. Durov also noted that distributing data from Ukrainian users would not only be a violation of the law, but also a crime against millions of users from Ukraine.

On April 22, 2014, it became known that Pavel Durov had gone abroad and had no intention of returning to Russia. He said this in an interview with TechCrunch. He noted: “Unfortunately, it is impossible to run an Internet business in this country.”

The founder of VKontakte also said that in the near future he plans to focus on creating a mobile social network. Later, the UCP fund, which at that time owned 48% of the shares of VKontakte, stated that it did not consider Pavel Durov’s resignation from the post of general director a fait accompli. UCP partner Yuri Kachuro believed that the executive director of VKontakte exceeded his authority and did not discuss such a serious decision with the board of directors.

Durov constantly moves from country to country, never staying in one for more than two or three weeks. His team of programmers travels with him to Paris, Singapore and other cities, with whom he develops the Telegram messenger. Pavel reported that he was not a fan of the idea of the state. “Now I am very happy, living without any property and considering myself a citizen of the world.” In addition to the Russian one, he has a passport from the state of Saint Kitts and Nevis; he received this passport after investing in the country’s economy.

Views and beliefs

Pavel Durov holds libertarian political views and is also a vegetarian. He advocates reform of the Russian educational system; abolition of taxes in the field of information; abolition of the visa system, registration and military conscription; reduction of customs duties; granting regions full autonomy; and also for the openness of the jury. He is inspired by Ernesto Che Guevara and Steve Jobs, and according to his religious beliefs, he is, according to some sources, a Pastafarian, according to others, a supporter of the Zen school.

Relationship to Facebook

When it became known that Facebook was looking for employees in Russia, Durov said that VKontakte employees do not switch to employment in another network, since “there are no fools” and Facebook is a “sinking ship.” A month earlier, he had already called the American social network a “stronghold of pedoliberals,” and in May 2012, on his Twitter account, he ironically called it a “cheap hack.”

Business style

Durov is characterized by a tough, sometimes even arrogant style of doing business. In 2011-2012, he waged a “corporate war” with Mail.ru Group, a major shareholder of VKontakte. The conflict began in March 2011 with the holding’s attempts to absorb the social network by purchasing 100% of its shares and merge the site with Odnoklassniki. In response, Durov called Mail.ru a “trash holding”, showed them the middle finger and convinced the co-founders of VKontakte not to sell their shares. Only in April 2012 did the “war” stop.

In the spring of 2012, a conflict broke out between VKontakte and the editors of the Vedomosti newspaper. Thanks to a technical innovation on the site, users could view the full texts of articles from web publications without clicking on an active link. Vedomosti considered this illegal and openly accused the social network of copyright infringement. VKontakte ignored the statement, and later disabled the activity of links to publications on the Vedomosti website. In the end, the newspaper’s editors removed the VKontakte widgets from their website and “froze” the publication’s official page on the social network. The managing director of the Vedomosti publishing company accused Durov of his inability to conduct a “civilized business.”

Criticism and recognition

Some Western media called Pavel the Russian Mark Zuckerberg. In 2011, Pavel was in third place on the list Forbes“9 of the most unusual Russian businessmen - extravagant, eccentrics and eccentrics” for publishing a photograph in which he demonstrates an obscene gesture in response to the efforts of a major shareholder of VKontakte - Mail.ru Group - to absorb this social network. The same magazine published a list of “30 most notable figures in Russian Internet business,” where Pavel was in seventh place. Durov was in 42nd place in the list of the most cited bloggers in the Russian media in the first half of 2012, according to a study by the Medialogia company. One of the creators of VKontakte, Oleg Andreev, explained the reason for the success of the social network in this way: “Pavel, unlike most programmers, understood what schoolchildren and students want from life, and how it looks in design. He knew how to look through the eyes of a person who has an old browser and a slow Internet."

Durov’s action of throwing airplanes with banknotes was harshly criticized by popular bloggers and journalists. Thus, Vladimir Solovyov called this act “a merchant’s whim,” and Durov himself a “underdog.” Solovyov was supported by the current

Pavel Valerievich Durov (born October 10, 1984, Leningrad, USSR) - Russian entrepreneur, programmer, ruble billionaire, one of the creators of the social network “VKontakte” and the company of the same name; creator of the cross-platform messenger Telegram. Former General Director of VKontakte (2006-2014). During his student years, he was a laureate of scholarships from the President of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Russian Federation, a three-time laureate of the Potanin Scholarship.

In 2001 he graduated with honors from the Academic Gymnasium, in 2006 he graduated from the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University with a degree in English Philology and Translation with honors (which he still has not received). A year earlier, he completed professional training at the Faculty of Military Education of St. Petersburg State University with a specialization in Propaganda and Psychological Warfare, after which he received the rank of reserve lieutenant. Immediately after graduating from university, he created VKontakte, currently the largest social network in Russia. As of 2011, Durov, with a fortune of 7.9 billion rubles, occupied 350th place in the ranking of Russian billionaires.

Pavel is a vegetarian and has libertarian political views. Durov is called the Russian Mark Zuckerberg, and is also often criticized for his eccentric antics and statements. On November 19, 2012, Nikolai Kononov’s book “The Durov Code” was published, describing the formation of VKontakte and its creator; AR Films has already acquired the rights to its film adaptation.

In 2014, he left Russia and announced that he had no plans to return.

In 2016 and 2017 included in the Forbes list of the 200 richest businessmen in Russia

Family

Father - Doctor of Philology Valery Semenovich Durov (born 1945), author of many scientific works, since 1992 has headed the Department of Classical Philology of the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University.

Mother - Albina Aleksandrovna Durova.

Brother - Nikolay (born 1980), mathematician, candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, multiple winner of Russian and international olympiads in mathematics and computer science, twice absolute world champion in programming among students, from the date of its foundation until mid-2013 he was the technical director of VKontakte "

Half-brother - Mikhail Petrov, son of Albina Durova from her first marriage.

Pavel's grandfather, Semyon Petrovich Tulyakov (born 1913), participated in the Great Patriotic War. He served in the 65th Infantry Regiment, took part in battles on the Leningrad Front in the Krasnoborsk and Gatchina directions, and was wounded three times. He was nominated for the Order of the Red Star, awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, II degree, and on the 40th anniversary of the Victory, the Order of the Patriotic War, I degree. After the war he was repressed.

Biography

Pavel Durov was born in Leningrad on October 10, 1984 into an intelligent family. He went to the first grade of school while in Turin, where his father worked for several years. Returning to his hometown, Pavel briefly studied at a regular school and entered the experimental classes of the Academic Gymnasium (now Mednikov’s Academic Classes), which provides in-depth study of all subjects, including four foreign languages. There he had a reputation as an erudite and sat at the first desk due to vision problems.

At the age of 11, he first became interested in programming. His trick is known when he changed the screensaver of all school computers to a photo of a computer science teacher with the caption “Must die” (Russian: Must die). Durov was deprived of access to computers, but he hacked passwords to them. In 2001 he graduated from the Academic Gymnasium with honors. In 2002, Pavel entered the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University, majoring in English Philology and Translation. For his academic achievements and contribution to student life at the university, he was awarded a scholarship from the Government of the Russian Federation, and then a scholarship from the President of the Russian Federation.

In general, Pavel Durov is distinguished by a passion for languages: “Learn foreign languages. This will unrealistically expand the depth of perception of the world and open up unprecedented prospects for training, development and career growth,” he once gave this advice to readers on his VKontakte page. It also lists the languages that Pavel Durov speaks: in addition to English, French, German, Spanish and Italian, he knows Latin and Persian.

Pavel was a three-time winner of the Potanin Scholarship, and was also one of a select number of St. Petersburg State University students with the highest level of intelligence and leadership abilities. He won competitions in computer science, linguistics and design, and organized university-wide events. Pavel graduated from the university in 2006 with honors (which he never took). A year earlier, he completed his professional training at the Faculty of Military Training of St. Petersburg State University with a specialization in Propaganda and Psychological Warfare. During his studies at this faculty, Pavel served as a platoon commander at the Faculty of Philology, and upon graduation received the rank of reserve lieutenant.

When I looked at people who commute to offices every day for routine work, I could not imagine such a scenario in my life. Managing Internet projects and organizing university events taught me independence and the idea that I had no direct superiors.

Pavel Durov

The original name of the future project - “Student.ru” - was replaced by Pavel with “VKontakte”, since, according to him, “sooner or later we all become graduates.” He started implementing it immediately after graduating from university. Pavel and his brother, Nikolai Durov, founded the limited liability company VKontakte and launched a beta version of the network of the same name, whose domain - vkontakte.ru - was, according to official data, registered on October 1, 2006. At first the site was closed, in other words, it was possible to register only after a personal invitation.

But at the end of the year registration became free. Within a few days, the network attracted more than 2,000 users; the reason is a competition - an iPod for whoever invites the most friends. The rapidly growing number of users forced the creators to change servers and improve software support for the network. Pavel repeatedly received offers to buy his product, but he rejected them. Instead, the programmer attracted investors to his project. VKontakte was developing before our eyes. Already in 2007, it became the third most popular site on the Runet; in 2008, the network was monetized, and the number of users exceeded 20 million. In 2010, Pavel’s company moved into the Singer house, which is located on Nevsky Prospekt, opposite the Kazan Cathedral.

In 2007, the newspaper “Business Petersburg” recognized Durov as one of the winners in the “Best Young Entrepreneurs of 2007” competition. As of 2011, Durov, with a fortune of 7.9 billion rubles, occupied 350th place in the ranking of Russian billionaires. In December 2011, Pavel and the head of the DST Global fund, Yuri Milner, launched the Start Fellows charity project, which is aimed at financing startups selected on a competitive basis. By the end of December, six startups received $25 thousand each. On January 24, 2012, at the Digital Life Design (DLD) conference in Munich, during a joint presentation with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Pavel promised to donate one million dollars to the online encyclopedia. In March, the transfer of the promised amount to the Wikimedia Foundation account was confirmed. “We greatly appreciate Mr. Durov's generous offer and thank him for his understanding of the grant review process,” said Wikimedia Foundation spokesman Jay Walsh.

On April 5, 2013, it was reported that while driving a car, Durov turned left from Sadovaya Street to the Moika River embankment, violating the requirements of the road sign. The traffic police officer who noticed the offense tried to stop the car. The driver did not comply with the requirement, continuing to drive, and as a result hit an employee, causing him bruises and abrasions. Initially, the VKontakte press service denied Pavel’s involvement in the incident, pointing out that their general director did not have a car. In addition, the car itself belonged to the vice-president of the company, Ilya Perekopsky. But in June, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for St. Petersburg proved that it was Durov who was driving. Immediately after the incident, a criminal case was opened against Pavel under Article 318 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (use of violence against a representative of the authorities), which after an investigation was closed in June 2013, and the offense itself fell under Article 19.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (disobedience to a lawful order of a police officer) , since the investigation did not collect sufficient evidence of the deliberate use of violence.

In September 2013, it became known that the criminal case was returned for further investigation in order to establish the presence or absence of criminal intent in the actions of Pavel Durov. Evidence indicating that Durov’s actions were deliberate and aimed at using violence against the police officer was again not found by investigators, and at the beginning of 2014 the criminal case was again discontinued.

Having exhausted all possibilities for a reasonable agreement, we transfer disputed cases on “VK” to legal companies. The brief essence of our complaints is that Pavel Durov and representatives of Mail.ru Group systematically made and continue to make decisions not in the best interests of VK...

UCP Partner Yuri Kachuro

In response, USM Advisors CEO Ivan Streshinsky accused UCP of systematic pressure on VK shareholders:

Since its declared entry into VKontakte, UCP has demonstrated a reluctance to build constructive relationships with other shareholders and the company’s management, preferring a strategy of threats, blackmail and intrigue. In particular, an entire campaign was organized to put legal pressure and publicly discredit the founder of VKontakte, Pavel Durov, with whom the UCP began communication with threats of lawsuits and criminal prosecution.

Ivan Streshinsky

In contact with

On January 24, 2014, it became known that in December 2013 Durov entered into a deal to sell his remaining 12% of VKontakte shares to Ivan Tavrin and ceased to be the owner of the network.

What you own sooner or later begins to own you.

I've been actively disposing of my possessions over the last few years, giving away and selling everything I owned, from furniture and belongings to real estate and companies. To achieve the ideal, all I had to do was get rid of the largest part of my property - a 12% share of VKontakte. I am glad that not so long ago I achieved this goal by selling my share of VKontakte to my friend Ivan Tavrin.

This change is unlikely to affect the management of VKontakte - the board of directors listens to my opinion not because of the presence or absence of my share, but because I created this network and understand its deep mechanisms. I’m not going anywhere and I’m going to continue to monitor the quality of VKontakte. In the end, VKontakte is the best thing that has been created in Russia in the communications field. And my responsibility is to take care and protect this network.

Pavel Durov

On April 1, Pavel Durov announced on his page that he was resigning from the post of General Director of VKontakte LLC, explaining this by reducing the available freedom of action, but then, on April 3, he withdrew his resignation letter. Then it turned out that this was not an April Fool's joke; on April 21, the owners of the social network VKontakte granted the resignation letter, which had previously been sent to them by the general director and founder of the network, Pavel Durov.

On August 14, 2013, the first Telegram client was introduced. In November, the program had, according to TJournal, about 1 million installations. In an interview with The New York Times, Pavel said that the initial idea for the app came to him back in 2011, when special forces came to his door. When the latter finally left, Durov immediately wrote to his brother Nikolai. It was then that he realized that he had no safe way to communicate with his brother. The service is built on MTProto correspondence encryption technology, developed by Pavel’s brother Nikolai.

Emigration

Pavel Durov and Arkady Volozh at the Yandex Data Factory conference, March 2, 2015
On April 16, Pavel Durov announced that on December 13, 2013, the FSB demanded that the network’s management hand over the personal information of the organizers of the Euromaidan groups, to which he refused. In December, a deal was made to sell a stake in the company. According to him, Russian jurisdiction does not extend to Ukrainian users of the VKontakte social network. Durov also noted that disseminating data from Ukrainian users would not only be a violation of the law, but also a crime against millions of users from Ukraine.

“I'm afraid there is no turning back for me. Especially after I publicly refused to cooperate with the authorities. »
The founder of VKontakte also said that in the near future he plans to focus on creating a mobile social network. Later, the UCP fund, which at that time owned 48% of the shares of VKontakte, stated that it did not consider Pavel Durov’s resignation from the post of general director a fait accompli. UCP partner Yuri Kachuro believed that the executive director of VKontakte exceeded his authority and did not discuss such a serious decision with the board of directors.

Durov constantly moves from country to country, never staying in one for more than two or three weeks. His team of programmers travels with him to Paris, Singapore and other cities, with whom he develops the Telegram messenger. Pavel reported that he was not a fan of the idea of the state. “I am very happy now, living without any property and considering myself a citizen of the world.” In addition to the Russian one, he has a passport from the state of Saint Kitts and Nevis; he received this passport after investing in the country’s economy.

Views and beliefs

Pavel Durov adheres to libertarian political views and is also a vegetarian. He advocates reform of the Russian educational system; abolition of taxes in the field of information; abolition of the visa system, registration and military conscription; reduction of customs duties; granting regions full autonomy; and also for the openness of jury trials. He is inspired by Ernesto Che Guevara and Steve Jobs, and according to his religious beliefs, he is, according to some sources, a Pastafarian, according to others, a supporter of the Zen school. On October 10, 2017, on his birthday, he spoke about seven things that he gave up many years ago, and which, in his opinion, negatively affect consciousness: 1) Alcohol 2) Animal meat 3) Pills and any pharmaceutical products 4) Nicotine and other narcotic substances 5) Coffee, black and green tea, energy drinks 6) Fast food, sugar, carbonated drinks 7) Television and its analogues.

Relationship to Facebook

When it became known that Facebook was looking for employees in Russia, Durov said that VKontakte employees do not switch to employment in another network, since “there are no fools” and Facebook is a “sinking ship.” A month earlier, he had already called the American social network “a stronghold of pedoliberals,” and in May 2012, on his Twitter account, he ironically called it a “cheap hack.”

Business style

Criticism and recognition

Some Western media called Pavel the Russian Mark Zuckerberg. In 2011, Pavel was ranked third in the Forbes list of “The 9 Most Unusual Russian Businessmen - Extravagant, Eccentrics and Eccentrics” for publishing a photograph in which he demonstrates an obscene gesture in response to the efforts of a major shareholder of VKontakte - Mail.ru Group - to absorb this social network.

A week after the negotiations between the two “whales” of the RuNet, Durov posted on Instagram a photo of himself with his middle finger stuck out. The indecent gesture was accompanied by the caption: “The official response to the trash holding Mail to its latest attempts to absorb VKontakte.”

The same magazine published a list of “30 most notable figures in Russian Internet business,” where Pavel was in seventh place. Durov was in 42nd place in the list of the most cited bloggers in the Russian media in the first half of 2012, according to a study by the Medialogia company. One of the creators of VKontakte, Oleg Andreev, explained the reason for the success of the social network in this way: “Pavel, unlike most programmers, understood what schoolchildren and students want from life, and how it looks in design. He knew how to see through the eyes of a person who has an old browser and a slow Internet.”

Durov’s action of throwing airplanes with banknotes was harshly criticized by popular bloggers and journalists. Thus, Vladimir Solovyov called this act “a merchant’s whim”, and Durov himself a “sub-Zuckerberg”. Solovyov was supported by the current Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Medinsky. Sergei Stillavin wrote in his LiveJournal diary: “A citizen who treats his people like cattle should receive the profession of a seamstress-machine operator in the zone.” Sergei Enikolopov concluded that “this is treated in the camps,” recalling the executions of “outraged” Bolsheviks in the 1920s and 1930s.

On May 9, 2012, Victory Day, Pavel wrote on his Twitter: “People are walking. Of course, 67 years ago, Stalin defended Hitler’s right to repress the population of the USSR.” Nikolai Valuev called his words “blasphemy” and announced that he was closing his accounts on VKontakte. Sergei Minaev announced a similar boycott, saying that he did not want to “support scum.” Later, VKontakte press secretary Vladislav Tsyplukhin explained that Durov respects Victory Day, and his entry is due to the fact that “his grandfather went through the whole war,” “and in gratitude he was repressed without trial.”

In literature

On November 19, 2012, the publishing house Mann, Ivanov and Ferber published Nikolai Kononov’s book “The Durov Code,” which describes the formation of the VKontakte social network. In the center of the plot is its founder, Pavel Durov. The book is quite documentary, based on facts and interviews.

In cinema
AR Films, founded by producer Alexander Rodnyansky, has acquired the rights to film the book “The Durov Code.” It was initially announced that the film would appear in theaters in 2014. At the same time, Durov himself had a negative attitude towards the film adaptation. Later it became known that the project was frozen - the Non-Stop Production company (part of AR Films) returned 25 million rubles allocated for the film adaptation to the Cinema Fund.

It's even getting scary

Thanks to the story of unsuccessful attempts to block the Telegram messenger, its founder and owner Pavel Durov managed to become a truly mythical figure in Russia. Still would. He managed to easily and gracefully resist the pressure of an entire state. He managed to make his messenger famous and competitive not only in Russia, but throughout the world.

But the most successful young Russian billionaire (net worth, according to Forbes, $1.7 billion) does not intend to stop there. News has appeared in the media that the brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov are developing the Telegram Open Network (TON) platform, which will become a kind of “Internet on the Internet” - a superstructure on the current Global Network, but it will not be possible to block access to it or hack it in the usual ways . This is a new virtual state, a step into the “matrix” and, apparently, the fulfillment of Pavel Durov’s cherished dream.

Virtual cemetery

Pavel Durov likes to present information about himself abstractly, in the format of maximalist statements. Thus, he formed a semi-mythical image of an ascetic billionaire and a convinced bachelor. He was born in Leningrad, his father Valery Semenovich, Doctor of Philology, headed the department of classical philology at St. Petersburg State University, where he still teaches. Pavel went to school in Turin, where his father was then at work. In his native St. Petersburg, he studied under an experimental program at an academic gymnasium, from which he graduated with honors. Afterwards he entered the philological department of St. Petersburg State University, majoring in English philology and translation. Pavel still hasn’t picked up his honors diploma from the university, and most of his fellow students recall that they “saw, but didn’t communicate,” “we studied in the same stream, but didn’t know each other personally.”

"I wait with hope and love,

As the rain pours...

Cheerful, summery, with blood..."

“Sun, warm, warm, warm.

Warm my chickens

So that the chickens, well done,

They carried boiled eggs.”

Still, it’s good that the founder of VKontakte abandoned poetry, which he was fond of during his student years. Although he himself called the poems “ironic” and, according to friends, treated them quite reverently, even publishing them in youth collections.

“He basically liked everything he did,” says Maxim Kashevarov, a university acquaintance of Durov, who also studied at the philology department, but a year younger. “I think it was this confidence that was one of the main components of his success.”

Who was Pavel Durov before he became the Russian Mark Zuckerberg?

Unlike his brother Nikolai, a technical genius, Pavel was more of a humanitarian - obviously, he would not have reached the heights of his brother-prodigy, so his parents decided to offer him another career, so as not to doom their youngest son to forever fade in the shadow of his elder. They could not even imagine that life would turn out completely differently.

Nevertheless, the second son was also very capable, philological disciplines were easy for Durov, he won competitions, received scholarships and eventually went to study at the philological department, which he graduated with honors.

It was the place and nature of his studies that became the starting point for further success. First, he opened the website durov.ru, which stored lecture notes, answers to tickets and other educational materials so necessary for a philologist. The success of this site prompted Durov to think about what he was going to do next. Then he opened a university student forum, and after that he got excited about the idea of creating a social network.

However, his first business project was... a beauty contest at the faculty. He received as much as 100 thousand rubles from the dean’s office for its organization, and in addition attracted sponsors from well-known brands.

“Durov personally arranged the casting and selected girls to participate in the competition,” says Kashevarov. - The girls tried their best to please him, but Durov was cold and arrogant with them. He was generally skeptical about women - whether this was due to boyish arrogance, or complexes, it is not clear.”

Indeed, almost nothing is known about Durov’s personal life. “Nicotine and alcohol are among the most dangerous drugs. I banned advertising of cigarettes and booze on VKontakte. Love is also a drug. That’s why I don’t fall in love,” he said in one of his few interviews.

Whether this is true or not, we don’t know, but there is reason to believe that Durov had at least one serious relationship. According to some media reports, which supported their information with an extract from the registry office, Durov has two children with a former student of the history department of the same university, Daria Bondarenko. According to employees of one of the St. Petersburg publications that published this information, it is absolutely reliable. The registry office employees themselves provided classified information to journalists. It is worth noting that the department’s employees violated the law, perhaps some of them did this for a reward, but it cannot be ruled out that the information about the children was a banal “leak” in order to put pressure on Durov. Its publication strangely coincided with increased interest in the founder of VKontakte on the part of intelligence officers.

Pavel Durov (before plastic surgery) with his alleged wife Daria Bondarenko (left).

Durov himself categorically denies the fact of having children.

“They had an affair - that’s all I know,” says Kashevarov. - It lasted until the last year, and then I never met with them personally. I didn’t receive any information about the children from anyone else either.”

As one of VK’s former employees told MK, a colleague at his new place of work once said that she personally knew “the wife and children of Pavel Durov” and even sat with his little daughter. But we were unable to confirm this data.

Perhaps Durov is not lying about the taboo on falling in love, because, while still in a relationship with Bondarenko (if you believe Kashevarov’s words), on his birthday, which coincided with the anniversary of the founding of VKontakte, he threw a grandiose party and invited several dozen escort girls there. agencies And the author of the biographical book “The Durov Code,” Nikolai Kononov, wrote that, according to the recollections of friends, Pavel once did not speak to his girlfriend for two weeks for educational purposes. But it’s unknown whether Bondarenko was discussed or not.

Another story speaks about Durov’s cynicism, which is the dominant feature of his personality.

One day he became concerned about the problem of pages of deceased VKontakte users and even thought about creating a virtual cemetery. In this context, he told his colleagues a story that Durov himself found very funny: one of the VKontakte users was asked by the parents of his deceased girlfriend to remove the album in which he posted her erotic photo shoot. Instead, the man simply drew in pools of blood in Photoshop. They say that while retelling this, Durov had a lot of fun and lamented that the creator of the creepy collage might have to be banned.

“I wouldn’t say that he showed any pathological cruelty or coldness, it’s just one of his character traits,” says Kashevarov. “But who I think he really loves dearly is his brother.” I saw them together several times, but his special relationship was immediately apparent.”

Brother Cat

Who is Nikolai Durov? According to one version, he is a computer genius not adapted to external life, who, despite his outstanding abilities, could not achieve success; according to another, he is the one who is the true creator of VKontakte and whose laurels were appropriated by Pavel. In fact, neither one nor the other, or rather, there is only a grain of truth in both of these statements.

The Durov brothers were born into a family of St. Petersburg intellectuals, although their parents were never wealthy. What they were definitely lucky with was their two sons - Nikolai and Pavel.

From an early age, Nikolai began to demonstrate outstanding abilities and the eccentricity characteristic of geniuses. As he grew older, these qualities worsened - he made few friends and was not popular with girls.

Senior Durov is the “non-public” face of the digital empire.

According to eyewitnesses, once on one of his trips to hot countries he ate a plate of porridge with beetles in it. Those around him were so dumbfounded by this spectacle that they did not even dare to tell Nikolai about the presence of insects on his plate.

One of his few friends was VKontakte technical director Anton Rosenberg. The only public scandal in Nikolai Durov’s life is connected with him, and quite a loud one at that. Rosenberg accused his former comrade of molesting his wife Natalya.

“I remember his notebook with ideas and projects: in particular, there was a diagram of the nuclear reactor that he dreamed of building: with limiting rods, a cooling circuit and turbines to generate electricity,” Rosenberg recalls the elder Durov’s childhood hobbies. He also talks about Nikolai’s rather specific sense of self.

“On the St. Petersburg State University forum he had the nickname K.O.T., which later turned into the nickname Cat, which eventually replaced the name. Moreover, Kolya actually considers himself a cat, calls his mother a “big cat,” loves to meow on the street and in restaurants and encourages others to do the same,” notes Rosenberg.

According to him, no matter how much he asked about the reason for the appearance of such a nickname, Nikolai always avoided answering. “According to one version, the death of their cat Morpheus (Morpheus) had an impact; at least, questions at the ceiling, “Where is our Morpheus?..” during negotiations led people unfamiliar with him to great confusion,” says Rosenberg.

However, everyone got used to the eccentricities of the co-founder of VKontakte, since public representation and serious negotiations were mainly taken over by Pavel.

As for Nikolai’s participation in the project that made his brother a millionaire, he is really behind the technical component of VKontakte. When Pavel Durov saw Facebook, he immediately called his brother, who was studying in Germany at the time, and said that he needed to write software for its Russian counterpart. But the idea itself, as well as its further promotion, undoubtedly belong to Paul.

“Unfortunately, Nikolai Durov turned out to be not at all a sweet and quiet botanist genius. Now it seems to me that he was influenced by money and fame, coupled with a lack of understanding of ordinary human feelings. Looking back, I rethink the past, I remember his indifference to his colleagues, and his cynicism towards people, and his indifference to animals - even cats are not really interested in him at all, they are just a totem, a symbol,” he writes about Nikolai in his revealing text under title "Durov's Cat" Anton Rosenberg.

However, given the circumstances of their quarrel, one cannot be sure of the objectivity of either party. According to Rosenberg, Nikolai had long had his eye on his then girlfriend, now his wife, and began pestering her behind his back. Moreover, he did not abandon these attempts even after the public disclosure of the unpleasant story.

Childhood friends quarreled forever. And then Anton had to resign from VKontakte, which it is fair to call his brainchild too. At first, Pavel tried to gently put pressure on Rosenberg to leave the company of his own free will, and then fired him allegedly for absenteeism.

The only public scandal involving Nikolai Durov occurred due to falling in love with a friend’s wife, Katya Rosenberg.

“I was fired without even paying my back wages, not to mention my bonus for last year.” An offended former employee went to court with a claim for illegal dismissal. But he soon received a blow back: Durov’s company is also suing Rosenberg - “for disclosing trade secrets.” Moreover, he estimates his damage at 100 million rubles.

As a result, the lawsuit was withdrawn and the parties agreed to a settlement, and the scandal was gradually hushed up. Rosenberg did not push the conflict further and try to sue Durov for large compensation. What happened had already hit him hard, shaking his career and almost breaking his family, so Kot’s former friend decided not to risk what was left.

But it was from the window of Rosenberg’s office in the VKontakte office that Durov Jr. produced airplanes from five thousand dollar bills. People crowded downstairs, snatching money from each other, and even a small crush formed. And the initiator of the entertainment laughed and did not let up, throwing a total of 60 thousand rubles out the window.

“My monthly salary has flown away,” stated the programmer who observed this.

Durov's father does not have Internet

In the “house on Kamyshovaya Street”, described by Anton Rosenberg in Durov’s Cat, is the apartment of Pavel and Nikolai’s parents. An ordinary ten-story panel building near the final metro station in the north of St. Petersburg. All around are new multi-storey “candles”; the buildings of the nineties with large courtyards look cozy and intimate against their background. Flower beds, playgrounds, yard football. In the front door, where the core of the future VKontakte once gathered, few people know “what kind of Durov he is,” and those who know are sure that he lives in Moscow, because “all these rallies take place there.”

The father of the Durov brothers lives in this St. Petersburg high-rise building.

Valery Semenovich Durov, the father of our hero, refused to talk: “You see, saying something will only cause harm. What can I tell you? We don't communicate with him. I don’t even have the Internet, I’m an elderly person. Yes, I haven’t seen him for a long time... Probably a year and a half.”

The neighbors, as it turned out, did not even know that this elderly intellectual was the father of “that same” Durov. “He walks around and says hello... What, does he have a famous son? If so, it’s strange that his dad lives here.”

“Durov’s Apartment” is another popular story among the Leader’s former employees. Most of them, of course, have never been there. And we are, of course, not talking about the family nest or even about Pavel’s apartment on Krestovsky, but about the “commune” of the developers of the social network, supposedly located in the center of St. Petersburg, not far from Singer’s house. According to ambiguous information from sources, the “elite”, that is, the developers, rented the apartment together.

However, it’s not easy to get into not only an apartment, but even the office of a social network. The VKontakte office is located in the famous Singer House on Nevsky Prospekt, on the ground floor of which is the House of Books. For a long time, the Telegram office was also registered there, but in January, after the scandal with Anton Rosenberg, the messenger moved out of the famous building, giving up the premises to VKontakte. Now, according to the building administration, it is impossible to get into the Singer dome. At the entrance, the guest is greeted by a security guard, even if you pretend that you are “for an interview,” the forgery will be immediately revealed over the phone. Directly upstairs, by the office, entry is by fingerprint only. “In principle, the most effective way to get into the office is to seduce one of the employees who works there (and at Singer, let us remind you, there are only management), - a former employee of the social network shares his opinion. “We had a case where a person who was clearly “sick” about the topic of social networks seduced a girl in order to work on her behalf.”

Leader

“Pavel Durov is an odious figure. You see, everyone is passionate about him - they either admire him or hate him. In official work chats on VKontakte, employees called him either Pavel or Vozhd. That’s it, with a capital letter,” a former employee of the social network created by Durov told MK on condition of anonymity during a personal meeting. It’s amazing that even the Leader’s former employees are confident that their contacts and personal correspondence on social networks and Telegram can always be viewed by “whoever needs it.”

“This cannot be called unambiguous tyranny,” he continues. - After all, this was communication with the authorities, and in such formulations there was a share of pleasure in “leadership.” In the end, many shared this point of view. And Durov - that Durov... Well, he always walked around in his black robes. I don’t really like the fact that he was made into a saint in public, and a caricatured saint at that.”

He is echoed by another former social network employee: “At corporate events, for example, we didn’t have alcohol or meat, only seafood. At the same time, under Durov there was such a touch of elitism. Only the elite - developers - gathered for the first corporate events. And then once there was a corporate party “for everyone” in the Sheremetev Palace. And all the people who worked from home came, and not in Singer’s house (only the management sat there, everyone else was remote). And these incredibly delicious dishes didn’t particularly suit them...”

Traditionally, there were two corporate events on VKontakte - October 10 (the birthday of the project and Pavel Durov) and December 24 (the Leader considered the New Year a bourgeois relic and proposed celebrating the winter solstice). And the popular photographer Alexander Mavrin always sat at a separate table. Mavrin is known for his erotic photographs, and at corporate events VK, together with his models, regally occupied a separate table. Neither Mavrin nor his 2011-2012 models responded to the MK correspondent’s invitations to talk about those glorious times.

“Why am I talking about a “caricatured saint,” our interlocutor continues. - Everyone remembers the story of how in 2012, on City Day, he threw airplanes made of five thousand dollar bills from the window of Singer’s house. And this is against the backdrop of his statements about asceticism. At that time, the salary of a support service employee, for example, was 20 thousand rubles, many did not understand his action.

There was also a story when groups with pornography were massively closed on social networks. Despite all the technical improvements, the main work was done manually: the entire community of many thousands was simply divided up by different people for work. And since this was all done at an accelerated pace, often at night, apparently due to lack of sleep, someone covered the group with the usual light erotica. The administrator was offended and wrote a post on his social network wall about this blatant injustice.

And then - I don’t know what it was, maybe Pavel himself liked to look through this group in his spare time - Durov personally came to him in the comments and said that this was someone’s mistake. And then all the changes regarding groups with pornography were simply stupidly rolled back. Tens of hours of labor simply went nowhere, although there was not even a formal order, there was only a comment in the public field. In principle, any dispute between employees ended instantly if the argument “I didn’t come up with it, it was the Leader who said so” came up.

Keanu Durov or Pavel Reeves? The founder of Telegram achieved a striking resemblance to his idol from The Matrix. Photo: still from the video.

The story of Yuri Khovansky’s verification check on the social network is also perceived as an act of “leadership.” The blogger was invited to serve on the jury of a beauty contest held by VK Live, and according to the company’s tradition, there was no alcohol at the event.

VK Live editor-in-chief Alexey Efimenko told the MK correspondent what happened next. “The event was closed, and in the announcement we warned that there would be no alcohol there and it was prohibited to take it with you. One of the guests said that Khovansky’s friends poured wine into his glass. Later, when we were cleaning up, a bottle of wine was found. I posted this on my wall (just as a fun fact, not intended to be punitive in any way). Pavel came to comment.”

In open sources, Paul, however, did not call for anything. VKontakte press secretary (at that time) Georgy Lobushkin immediately wrote that Khovansky’s verification was canceled and handed over to the girl who took second place in the beauty contest. Moreover, Alexey Efimenko told about this situation: “Pavel did not agree with the results of the competition and said that first place should have gone to the girl who took second. Later, Pavel came to one of the events with a bag full of new iPhones, one of which he offered to give to this girl.”

The magic of numbers

“Those who are looking for castles, sports car lots and a fleet of Boeings in my life will be sorely disappointed. I don't have planes, cars or houses. My world is traveling on foot and by metro, as well as sleeping in a rented room measuring 18–20 m2. Those who would like to change places with me will also have to completely give up alcohol, meat and expensive clothes,” Pavel Durov once said about himself. And everything would be fine, but it has nothing to do with reality. Well, apart from meat and alcohol, Durov really doesn’t consume them.

This phrase was said to journalists at the peak of his career and, according to people around Pavel Durov, then he tried in every possible way to be like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. But material things were not at all alien to Durov. And, of course, he had every right to do this, but he preferred to carefully hide his true life.

In fact, at the time of the publication of words about the metro and a rented room, Pavel had his own white Maybach, in which he drove around the city, soon after that a private plane appeared, perhaps more than one, a castle in Italy and much more.

Durov’s apartment alone in the Fifth Element residential complex, located on the shore of a pond in the center of Primorsky Victory Park on Krestovsky Island in St. Petersburg, cost 500 million rubles at that time. It was there that the riot police came for him on December 9, 2011, when the FSB raided VKontakte.

In addition, for 500 thousand dollars for himself and his brother, he acquired citizenship of the Caribbean state of St. Kitts and Nevis. Now he has completely moved to Dubai, rented a luxurious office in a skyscraper, rides through the desert on a white horse and attends noisy parties.

Why, one might ask, would you pretend to be Mark Zuckerberg if you are Pavel Durov, no less successful and talented, but completely different? And here we are faced with one interesting feature of Durov.

“He always loved the number two, apparently protesting against the imposed stereotype that two is bad, because it means “failure” in the record book,” says Maxim Kashevarov. “I tried to prove that number two is not bad at all.”

And Pavel Durov was great at being second. Being the second son and the second talented child in the family after his brother, he made the most of the abilities of both of them. Having become second after Zuckerberg, Durov was able to create his own unique product - first VKontakte, then Telegram - and, apparently, this is just the beginning.

But there is something else in which Durov plays the role of the second. If we look at his old photographs, we will see almost a different person there - protruding ears, brown hair with signs of early alopecia, uneven teeth and a small chin - this is what Pavel Durov looked like before. Now we see a bright brunette with thick hair and a sculpted face.

We asked plastic surgeon Gia Kinchidze to evaluate the changes in his appearance.

According to the specialist, firstly, Durov had a hair transplant. “Usually hair from the back of the head is used for this, but judging by the result, this was not the case. This man had very thick hair growing on his head, and most likely he used donor hair grafting. This procedure is not yet common in our country, but it has been done successfully in Germany for a long time. It can cost about 100 thousand dollars. He also performed plastic surgery on the ears and chin, but these are quite easy and inexpensive operations,” noted Kinchidze. Durov obviously dyes his new hair and wears colored contact lenses in front of his eyes.

In addition, the surgeon doubted the reliability of Durov’s muscle relief, suggesting that he could use a new type of liposuction, with the help of which the ideal body shape is constructed. But Kinchidze does not undertake to confirm this from photographs.

Why did Pavel Durov not only correct defects in his appearance, but completely change his type - from a fair-haired “nerd” he turned into a handsome black-haired man? The answer lies in his passion as a student. He watched the movie “The Matrix” countless times and identified himself with Neo, the main character played by Keanu Reeves. Well, apparently, Durov’s childhood dream has come true - almost a copy of Neo looks at him from the mirror every day.

Perhaps, due to dramatic changes in appearance, he does not want to communicate with his own father? We can only guess.

In the wake of Telegram blocking in Russia, Pavel Durov began to engage in a topic unusual for him - politics. Rallies are being organized under his auspices, and he has already become embroiled in an internal opposition scandal. The leadership of the Libertarian Party, of which he is a member, fell out with other oppositionists, refusing to jointly fight for a free Internet. Durov also supported the position of the party members. He also announced the creation of his own virtual political movement, “Digital Resistance.”

Either Durova continues to pursue the second number, he is seriously involved in politics and wants to become the second Navalny, uniting young people around himself, or he started all this to attract people to the TON he created. We will soon find out how things really are.

“Something grandiose awaits you in 2018,” Pavel Durov promised us not so long ago. Is he really going to be the first in anything?

Saint Petersburg.