Birth and family
The real name of the writer Daria Dontsova is Agrippina Vasilyeva. She was born on June 7, 1952 in Moscow.
Her father, Arkady Nikolaevich Vasiliev, was born in 1907. In his youth he worked in the political intelligence service of the OGPU. But then he took up literary activity, working in the editorial offices of the publishing houses “Rabochy Krai”, “Moscow”, “Krokodil”, “Ogonyok”. In the Moscow branch of the Writers' Union, he worked as secretary of the party organization. His debut as a writer took place in 1949 with the release of the collection of feuilletons “The Velvet Road”. Subsequently, Vasilyev wrote many stories, novels, scripts and feuilletons, many of his works were filmed (“Comrade Arseny”, “Monday is a Hard Day”).
The mother of the future writer, Tamara Stepanovna Novatskaya, was born in 1917 into a Polish-Cossack family. She worked as a director at the Mosconcert and was friends with many famous artists, whom she constantly accompanied on tour. Mom was a very cheerful, warm and sociable person. Tamara Stepanovna lived to be 101 years old, so along this line Daria Dontsova has wonderful long-livers genetics.
My paternal grandfather, Nikolai Vasiliev, worked at a weaving factory. Grandmother Agrippina, after whom her granddaughter was named, was a charwoman who washed floors. They lived very poorly, sometimes there was not enough money, not only for clothes, but even for food. But grandfather was ready to starve altogether just to buy expensive kerosene, a pencil and a notebook from the store. He kept diaries, and he did it according to the principle: what I see, I write. And when the grandmother was indignant because there was nothing to eat in the house, and her husband bought a notebook and pencil again, he calmly answered her: “Calm down, Grunya, I didn’t spend money on drinking or smoking. Understand, if I don’t write, I’ll get sick.” My grandfather had no education, but at the same time he felt an irresistible craving for writing. All this was passed on at the genetic level to their son Arkady Vasiliev, and then to their granddaughter Daria Dontsova.
My maternal grandfather was a Polish communist, his real name was Stefan Nowacki. But since he married and began to live in Russia, he fought together with Felix Dzerzhinsky, here he was given a Russian name - Stepan. Grandmother's name was Afanasia Shabanova, she came from a wealthy Kislovodsk family. In 1916, my grandparents got married and left for Moscow, where a year later the mother of the future writer was born. In 1937, my grandfather was arrested and died in the camps; he was posthumously rehabilitated. He foresaw his arrest, so he filed for a divorce in advance, and his wife and daughter were not touched.
Children and grandchildren of Daria Dontsova
Although the writer has two children, she considers herself a three-time mother, since from an early age she participated in raising Dmitry, Alexander’s son from her first marriage. All of Daria Dontsova’s children have grown up long ago, become independent, financially independent and successful in different ways.
Daria Dontsova with her son Arkady
The son of Daria Dontsova, Arkady Vasiliev, was born on September 29, 1973. He was married to a girl, Natalya, who bore him a son, Nikita (the writer’s first grandson). Arkady did not always live up to his parents' expectations.
In 2012, he found himself in an unpleasant situation and a criminal case was filed against him. After Vasiliev stopped reporting to the police, he was put on the wanted list.
At that time, Dontsova refused to comment on the situation and said that her son was old enough to solve his problems on his own. Apparently, the conflict between mother and son has long been resolved. In 2021, Arkady turned 47 years old. Dontsova joyfully announced this event on her Instagram.
“Happy birthday, Arkasha! The Lord sent me a wonderful son. Due to the coronavirus, we gathered in a very close group,” Daria wrote on the social network.
Arkady has a daughter, Tamara, whom her family affectionately calls Tata. The girl is a parishioner of the Church of the Savior Not Made by Hands.
Granddaughter of Daria Dontsova Tamara
Daria Dontsova's step-son, Dmitry Dontsov, made the writer a grandmother, giving her beautiful granddaughters Nastya (born in 2004) and Arina (born in 2009). Dmitry's wife's name is Margarita.
Large family of Daria Dontsova
Daria Dontsova is incredibly proud of her daughter. Maria was born on September 6, 1986.
Daria Dontsova with her daughter Maria
The girl did well at school and graduated from Moscow State University. According to Dontsova, her daughter began working at the age of 16.
“Masha achieved everything with her work, perseverance, and talent. She went from the lowest level to a world-famous specialist who flies all over the world. “I have been financially independent from my parents for a long time,” the writer says about her daughter.
Maria is married to Yuri Subbotin. The girl met her chosen one during her student years and since then the lovers have not parted. They legalized their relationship only in 2013, and two years later they became the happy parents of a boy, Mikhail.
Wedding of Maria Dontsova and Yuri Subbotin
The youngest grandson of Daria Dontsova was born on December 29, 2015. The writer loves all her children and grandchildren very much, shares their successes with subscribers and often publishes family photos on Instagram.
Grandson of Daria Dontsova Mikhail
Also, Daria Dontsova’s children can be called her favorite dogs. Four-legged friends are integral members of the family. The writer even calls her house “Pug House”; everything in it is equipped for pets.
Childhood
When little Dontsova was born, her parents were not registered, since her father was still officially married to his previous wife. They all lived together with grandmother Afanasia in a barracks on Skakova Street.
When Dasha was two years old, the barracks were resettled, and her grandmother received a room in a communal apartment on Kirova Street. But the room was so small that it was not possible for four of us to live there. Therefore, the grandmother and granddaughter moved into a communal apartment, and the parents lived in a small apartment, which they shared with the Soviet writer Viktor Shklovsky. And only in 1957, my father received an apartment in a new building not far from the Airport metro station, where the whole family could finally move in.
From the age of four, the grandmother taught her granddaughter to douse herself with cold water in the morning. Since then, for sixty years, Dasha has not changed this habit; for her, this is the same necessary procedure as brushing her teeth. In the summer she even adds pieces of ice to a bucket of water, and in the winter she can easily go outside barefoot and wet herself while standing in the snow. Thanks to this, Dontsova, neither as a small child nor as an adult woman, practically did not know what a runny nose and a cold were.
In 1959, when Dasha went to school, her parents formalized their relationship. Along with the secondary school, they wanted to enroll Dontsova in music classes. But the teachers discovered that the girl had a complete lack of hearing for music. Mom and grandmother were crazy music lovers and began to take little Dasha to theater premieres of opera and ballet, to concerts at the conservatory, but the girl felt sad there.
Biography of Dontsova
Daria Dontsova was born on June 7, 1952 in Moscow. She was raised in the family of the writer and OGPU employee Arkady Nikolaevich and his wife Tamara Stepanovna, who was the director of the Mosconcert.
Childhood and youth
At the time of Daria's birth, her parents were not officially married. This was due to the fact that her father had not yet been divorced from his previous wife. The couple legalized their relationship only in 1959, when their daughter was already 7 years old.
At first, the family lived in a barracks. When the barracks were disbanded, Dontsova and her grandmother were forced to live without their parents for about a year, since the room provided to the family was too small.
Only in 1957 was Daria reunited with her parents: they settled in the new building “Moscow Writer”, in which Arkady Nikolaevich, as a Soviet writer, was allocated an apartment. Various famous personalities often visited their home, including the writer Valentin Kataev.
During this period of her biography, Dontsova was raised by two governesses, a French woman and a German woman, thanks to whom she mastered foreign languages in childhood. The girl was friends with Kataev’s granddaughter Valentina, and also often communicated with Korney Chukovsky.
As a teenager, Daria saw Lilia Brik on the street, the lover of Vladimir Mayakovsky. This meeting remained in her memory for the rest of her life. When the girl was 12 years old, her father took her to Germany, from where she brought many detective novels. It is worth noting that she read them in German.
Studies
At school, Dontsova was not an authoritative figure for her classmates. And she studied mediocrely, mastering the exact sciences with great difficulty. But Dasha loved humanitarian subjects; she was especially good at foreign languages; now the writer is fluent in French and German.
Since her father was a member of the USSR Writers' Union, Dontsova spent her entire summer vacation in Peredelkino, where she often spent time with the famous children's writer Korney Chukovsky.
Literature fascinated Dasha madly, and genetics made itself felt. Even when in 1964 the girl first visited her father abroad (his book was going to be published in Germany, and he was invited to this country), she brought from there not clothes and trinkets, but a bunch of detective novels.
Therefore, it is not surprising that after graduating from school, Dontsova chose the journalism department of Moscow State University for further study. In 1974 she received a diploma of higher education.
School years
The girl’s school years were interesting, although she was not particularly popular among her classmates. The future writer liked to study, but not all sciences were easy for her. Mathematics and physics were quite difficult for her to understand, but she studied humanitarian subjects, as well as foreign languages, with great pleasure.
As a child, she had two governesses who taught the girl German and, to a lesser extent, French. A good individual education allowed the girl to easily speak foreign languages, but she fell in love with German speech more.
In 1964, the girl went to Germany with her father, from where she brought back many interesting detective stories.
Agrippina read the German classics written by Dick Francis, James Hadley Chase, Georgette Heyer and other masters of the genre in the original.
Arkady Nikolaevich had many familiar writers, such as Voznesensky, Chukovsky, Kataev, Rozhdestvensky, who were open to communicating with the girl.
This is how the future writer, Daria Dontsova, discovered her love for books!
Labor path
Dasha was twenty years old when her dad died. And a month after the funeral, she gave birth to her first child - a son, Arkady. The relationship with my first husband did not go well. Dontsova was still studying at the university and working part-time as a journalist at Vecherka; sometimes this salary was not even enough for food; it happened that potatoes had to be bought by the piece, and not by the kilogram. But she was lucky in life in that every time things became very bad or almost unbearable, fate gave her a meeting with good, kind people who helped, encouraged and inspired hope. After all, sometimes one word is enough to stop considering yourself a person driven into a corner.
After graduating from university, Dontsova went to the Syrian city of Aleppo, where for two years she worked at the Soviet Consulate as a translator from French. Returning to the USSR, she worked for seven years as a journalist in periodicals - the Fatherland magazine and the Evening Moscow newspaper.
Since 1985, Dontsova began to earn money by giving private foreign language lessons. A year before, she wrote her first work - a story about steelworkers, but the magazine "Youth" was not interested in her work. This ended the career of a writer who illuminates the exploits of the working Soviet people.
Disease and victory over it
In the summer of 1997, Dasha went on vacation to Tunisia with her family and friend. A week later, she discovered that her breasts no longer fit into the top of her swimsuit. Daria herself was happy about this, and she shared the news with her friend, who was a doctor by profession. However, my friend did not share the joy and advised me to immediately interrupt my vacation and go to Moscow for an examination with an oncologist.
But Dasha did not interrupt her vacation, and upon arriving home she completely forgot about her friend’s advice. She went to the doctor when her chest began to hurt badly. The verdict was given to her quickly: “Breast cancer.” An endless series of hospital procedures began - a puncture, a bunch of tests, preparation for the operation, horror stories that women told under the offices, then came the fear that you might not wake up from anesthesia.
In the end, Dasha underwent surgery and it went well. Then there was a rehabilitation period. As the writer herself says, oncology is a kind of litmus test. It helps to fully reveal the character of the sick person and the true qualities of those people who surround the patient. Now Daria clearly states that she shares her victory over this terrible disease with her family and friends who supported her during a difficult period in her life.
It was this disease that radically changed the life of Agrippina Vasilyeva and made her the most famous modern writer in Russia - Daria Dontsova.
Court cases involving Daria Dontsova
Apparently, the writer’s popularity haunts many, which is why lawsuits have been filed against her several times. This happened for the first time in 2005. Kirill Ganin, the creator of the sex theater, accused Dontsov of slandering his theater. But the court rejected the man’s claim.
In 2006, the Armand automobile salon did not like the novel “The Sky in Rubles.” They wanted the book to disappear from sale, and Dontsova to pay 500 thousand rubles for moral damages.
In the novel, Daria allegedly accused the salon employees of fraud. As a result, the parties to the conflict managed to reach an agreement.
Daria Dontsova’s novel “The Sky in Rubles”
In 2011, Viktor Shenderovich filed a lawsuit against Dontsova; he demanded 380 thousand rubles from the writer. In the book “Emperor of the Village of Gadyukino,” Daria used the name of the settlement, which Shenderovich allegedly invented back in the 1980s. The man's claim was denied.
Creation
When Dasha was recovering from surgery, her husband brought her a pen and notebook to the hospital. To take her mind off the terrible illness, she began to write. In just five days, Dontsova created her first book, “Cool Heirs.” And when her course of treatment in oncology came to an end, five books were already ready for publication.
Her first works were received with a bang by readers, so the EKSMO publishing house, with which Dontsova began collaborating, was interested in her new works. And they were not long in coming.
Daria writes in the genre of an ironic detective story; she sometimes copies the heroes of her works from herself, her family, acquaintances, and friends.
Over almost twenty years of writing, her work can be divided into six cycles, in each of which private investigations are conducted by a new detective personality:
- wealthy, intelligent woman Dasha Vasilyeva;
- daughter of a general and opera singer Evlampiya Romanova;
- German language tutor Viola Tarakanova;
- son of the Soviet writer Ivan Podushkin;
- teacher of Russian language and literature Tatyana Sergeeva;
- student of the Pedagogical Institute Stepanida Kozlova.
People love her books for their cheerfulness and optimism; they teach them to treat the world more kindly. For her creative achievements, Daria Dontsova has repeatedly won the Writer of the Year and Bestseller of the Year awards. Many of her works have been filmed.
Personal life
Dasha Dontsova was married three times. In her first marriage, she gave birth to a son, Arkady, who today has been happily married for a long time and pleased his mother with his grandson Nikita. Despite the birth of Arkasha, Daria and her husband soon divorced.
The second marriage also did not turn out to be happy.
In 1983, Dasha married a doctor of psychological sciences, professor at Moscow State University, academician Alexander Ivanovich Dontsov. In this marriage, a girl, Masha, was born in 1986. The daughter grew up a long time ago, graduated from Moscow State University, got married and gave her parents another wonderful grandson, Misha.
Dontsova is a crazy animal lover. Several dogs and cats live in the house permanently, and animals also become indispensable heroes of her works. The writer especially loves pugs; Dasha now has four of them, and a cat and a turtle also live with them.
Secrets of being slim
Dontsova is not at all embarrassed by her age. Dasha believes that old age manifests itself in rigidity. This is when a person constantly adheres to the same life pattern, does not want to learn something new, has lost interest in work, travel and friends, when everything around him irritates him. Dontsova’s main principle is to prevent such internal aging. And the external signs of age are not so scary, especially since they can be overcome with physical activity.
Although until the age of 45, Dasha did not engage in sports at all. I could go to the pool once a week, but without much enthusiasm. And after cancer, Daria was prescribed hormonal medications, from which she began to gain weight. And then fitness clubs appeared in her life. And for the past twenty years, Daria has been doing fitness training three times a week under the guidance of a trainer. Her workout lasts three hours, two of which are hard exercises with dumbbells and barbells, and one hour of muscle stretching.
Dontsova went on a diet once in her life, when her weight reached 75 kg after her first birth. Since then, she has completely reviewed and changed her diet: she just eats some things and doesn’t eat others. Her diet does not include sausages, pork or beef, or sweets. But the writer’s daily menu includes chicken and turkey, cheese and cottage cheese, and fish. He eats bread rarely and only without yeast. In general, Dasha came to the conclusion that people get fat not from food, but from overeating. If she feels hungry during the day, she fights it with nuts, dried fruits, a banana or a piece of natural dark chocolate.
Dasha openly encourages everyone: “People, do any kind of sports, at least just walk and walk more!”
