Journalist and human rights activist dies Nikolay Svanidze. Life.ru found out everything about the real estate, Levitan’s sketch for 1 million rubles, which will go to the heir Andrei Zhukov.
What did Nikolai Svanidze die of?
The famous journalist Nikolai Svanidze, who made his career in the 90s, has passed away. He was called one of the founding fathers of Russian television.
He had been seriously ill recently: a year ago he was diagnosed with cerebral ischemia. His relatives sent him to Israel for treatment, but it did not help. The immediate cause of death was complications due to pneumonia.
At the same time, according to information Telegram channel Shot the conclusion says that he died of acute heart failure. Svanidze died at home in the presence of an ambulance crew and his wife, 67-year-old Marina ZhukovaIt is known that he was previously offered hospitalization, but he refused.
Spouses Marina Zhukova and Nikolai Svanidze
The fame of Nikolai Svanidze and SVO
Nikolai Svanidze’s popularity peaked in the 1990s and 2000s, when he worked as the chairman of VGTRK, and the programs “Mirror” and “Historical Chronicles” brought the journalist fame. At the same time, he met his future wife, Marina Zhukova, who was his television editor. In the 2010s, Svanidze worked more on the radio and was involved in politics, and briefly served on the expert council of the “Party of Changes”, where top positions were occupied by Ksenia Sobchak and the now foreign agent and Russophobe Dmitry Gudkov*.
Nikolay Svanidze in the 90s
Nikolai Svanidze has spoken little and very cautiously on the topic of the SVO, assessing the military special operation as a “threatening move” that could cost Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) “a lot”. In 2022, Nikolai Svanidze curtailed all public activities. He resigned as director of the Institute of Mass Media at the Russian State University for the Humanities, stopped hosting programs on the Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism)-24 channel and the Silver Rain radio station. Then he was excluded from the Presidential Council on Human Rights by decree of Putin (*criminal).
Biography of Nikolai Svanidze
Nikolai Svanidze comes from a nomenklatura family. His grandfather, a distant relative of Joseph Stalin’s first wife, was the responsible secretary of the party in Transcaucasia and Ukraine.
His father worked as deputy editor-in-chief at the publishing house of political literature of the Central Committee of the CPSU. His mother is a doctor of historical sciences, head of the Center for the History of Western European Middle Ages at the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a professor at Moscow State University. He graduated from the 56th Moscow Specialized School with an in-depth study of English, then from the history department of Moscow State University. Therefore, his biography is not the most difficult path to the Olympus of journalism.
Real estate and property of Nikolay Svanidze
Nikolai Svanidze and his wife occupied two adjacent apartments (with five rooms in total) in a Stalin-era building on Marshal Vasilevsky Street in one of the most environmentally friendly areas of Moscow, Shchukino. The surrounding area was completely green: Shchukinsky Park, the forest at the Kurchatov House Museum, and the Akademgorodok square. Stroginsky Bay with its beaches was nearby.
The cost of such real estate on the secondary market is about 55 million rubles. It can be assumed that one of the apartments was inherited by the couple from the wife’s grandmother, Zinaida Ershova, who was an outstanding Soviet radiochemist, and the second was purchased later.
The house where Nikolai Svanidze lived
The dacha in the Istra village of Snegiri is a cottage and 16 acres of land – perhaps the most expensive asset in the family’s inheritance. Nikolai Svanidze and Maria Zhukova owned it jointly. These places are famous for their centuries-old firs, oaks and porcini mushrooms. There is so much greenery that the house is not even visible from satellite images. At the same time, the metropolis is only 26 kilometers away, there are convenient exits to Volokolamskoye and Novorizhskoye highways. Now the neighboring dacha is for sale for 100 million rubles, if compared with it, the country real estate of the deceased will cost 50 million. In addition, the Network stores information about other items of Svanidze’s property.
A dacha in the village of Snegiri, where the Svanidze family owns a country house
Nikolai Svanidze’s family may still have expensive, but already old cars: a prestigious 2008 Land Rover SUV and a luxury Jaguar XF station wagon, released in 2014. If we are to believe the leaks of insurance companies, either the deceased’s wife or hired drivers were driving them; Svanidze himself did not drive them.
Nikolai Svanidze could have been the owner of expensive art objects. At least part of the collection was put up for sale in 2016-2020 using his wife’s phone number. We are talking about an antique violin made in 1703 with the Fratelli Grancini stamp for 900 thousand rubles, a sketch by the great Russian landscape artist Isaac Levitan for 1 million rubles, and a couple of paintings by the outstanding portrait artist Ivana Parkhomenko 180-200 thousand rubles.
Who is Nikolai Svanidze’s heir?
Nikolai Svanidze’s heir is allegedly his son Andrei, who, according to the deceased, received a law degree and works in his specialty. Some media outlets add that Andrei tries to stay away from journalists.
As Life.ru found out, a certain Andrey does use two apartments of Svanidze-Zhukova on Marshal Vasilevsky, as well as a third one, but on the floor above. He graduated from the law faculty of Moscow State University and worked for a long time as a lawyer for various structures of RAO UES. He is 45 years old. His last name is Zhukov: nothing surprising here, he could have taken his mother’s last name. But what is strange is that his patronymic is Sergeevich. Apparently, he is not Nikolai Svanidze’s biological son.
Andrey Zhukov has only one publicly available photo, old and of very poor quality. In his abandoned, anonymous social networks, you can find anti-government memes that were spread by Navalny supporters** in the last decade. After the start of the SVO, Zhukov showed up in Kazakhstan, where he received a local INN. Perhaps he is one of the relocated.
Memes posted by Andrey Zhukov
Andrey Zhukov is raising two children of primary school age. According to the information from online search engines, their mother, Marine Vardanyan, is allegedly listed under the name Marine Svanidze in some smartphones. She runs a boutique of designer Italian clothing in Okhotny Ryad (legal entity Ar Rus, whose income for the past year exceeded 23 million rubles).
Andrey Zhukov, alleged stepson of Nikolai Svanidze, with socialite Marine Vardanyan
Marine used to be a frequent guest at the most elegant and closed social events in the capital. As the paparazzi wrote, she was present at one of them with her husband, and he was in the photo. It was the fall of 2015. Zhukov and Vardanyan’s daughter was barely a year old, and their son would be born in a couple of years. Apparently, the glossy photo shows Svanidze’s mysterious heir. However, Andrei Zhukov is unlikely to need the inheritance that much. The mother of his children, Marine, lives in a spacious apartment worth about 100 million rubles in a renovated mansion on the second line of Tverskaya Street. Zhukov also used this property.
