April 28: Dmitry Zimin's birthday, the founder of Beeline and the Dynasty Foundation

Dmitry Zimin was born on April 28, 1933, in Moscow. An entrepreneur, scientist, and philanthropist, he founded one of the largest mobile operators in Russia and donated almost his entire fortune to support science and education.
From a merchant family – through repression to science
Zimin came from a merchant family. His father, a mechanical engineer, was repressed when his son was two years old; he died in a camp near Novosibirsk that same year. While still in school, Dmitry developed a passion for radio engineering. In 1957, he graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute's Faculty of Aircraft Electronics, and in 1962, at the age of 29, he was invited to join the secret Radio Engineering Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Until the mid-1990s, he held leadership positions there, including as deputy chief designer of the Don-2N radar station—part of the missile defense system for the Central Industrial Region. At 51, he defended his doctoral dissertation. In total, he has published over 100 scientific papers and inventions.
Beeline from scratch
In the 1990s, already at 60, Zimin became an entrepreneur: after working in the military-industrial complex, the free market became, in his own words, a "breakthrough." In 1991, on the eve of the collapse of the USSR, he registered a small enterprise, KB Impuls, on the premises of his institute, developing satellite and cable television systems. In 1992, he founded the joint-stock company Vimpel-Communications (VimpelCom) and launched a pilot mobile communications station covering the Garden Ring, with approximately 200 subscribers under the Beeline brand. By 2001, this number had exceeded one million. Soon after, Zimin stepped down as CEO, remaining the company's honorary president.
Money - to give away
In 2005, Forbes estimated Zimin's fortune at $520 million. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he became the first Russian to donate almost all of his wealth to charity. In 2002, he founded the Dynasty Foundation for the Support of Russian Science, and in 2008, the Enlightener Prize for Popular Science Books. Since its inception, the foundation has allocated 2,5 billion rubles to support science and education. The foundation also supported independent media outlets in the regions.
Leaving business for charity is a standard path, a normal human behavior. After all, what do you do with the money? Leave it to your children? It could ruin their lives.
Foreign agent and emigration
In 2015, at 82, Zimin became the first person to receive the Ministry of Education's "Loyalty to Science" award. However, that same year, the Ministry of Justice added the Dynasty Foundation to its register of foreign agents. Three months later, Zimin closed the foundation and left Russia.
Of course, I will not spend my personal money under the brand of a foreign country unknown to me.
In 2016, together with his son Boris, he founded the international nonprofit organization "Zimin Foundation" to support education and science worldwide. In August 2020, Boris Zimin's foundation funded the special plane that evacuated Alexei Navalny from Tomsk to Germany after his poisoning.
Dmitry Zimin died in 2021 in Switzerland at the age of 88, via euthanasia after being diagnosed with cancer. In 2025, Vera Krichevskaya's documentary film "Close" about his life and death was released.
Power cannot be loved. It is a perversion. Society must be able to control it.

