Vyacheslav Dobrynin

Vyacheslav Grigoryevich Dobrynin (, born Antonov ; 25 January 1946 – 1 October 2024) was a popular Russian composer and singer also known as Doctor Shlyager. He was awarded the People's Artist of Russia in 1996.

Early life Dobrynin was born in 1946 to an Armenian father and a Russian mother. He never bore his father's surname of Petrosian – his father left the family before he was born and he used his mother's surname Antonov throughout his childhood, changing it to Dobrynin in 1972. He studied at Moscow State University and received a diploma as an "art historian and theorist" in 1970. He subsequently worked at the Tretyakov Gallery and Pushkin Museum.

Career As an amateur musician and singer he participated in different Beatles-style groups. Dobrynin started to compose songs in the late-1960s and from 1971 co-operated with the Oleg Lundstrem orchestra, "Vesyolye Rebyata", "Samotsvety" and other bands. He wrote more than 1000 songs, often based on poems by Leonid Derbenyov, Robert Rozhdestvensky, Mikhail Tanich and Ilya Reznik. In 1998, Dobrynin got a star on the Star Square in Moscow.

In the 1980s Dobrynin started to record his own songs, and in 1990 he founded "Doctor Shlyager" band.

Death It was reported that Dobrynin suffered a stroke in September 2024 and was hospitalised in Moscow. His death was reported on 1 October. He was 78.

Dobrynin has performed in duets with his US born granddaughter Sonya Dobrynina-McGaffrey; with the songs "Whenever in the Future" (Когда Нибудь) and "All I Have in Life" (Все что в жизни есть у меня) to open a concert in the Kremlin in 2011 when she was 10, and "Raspberry Berry" (Ягода Малина) in Corcus City Hall in 2016 when she was 15 which was broadcast live on Russia's Channel One 1TV.

Songs Dobrynin's songs are mostly dedicated to unhappy love and romantic events of a person's life. Among his most popular hits are: All I Have in Life Native Land Don't Rub Salt Into My Wound The Music is Flowing