Dontsov, Ivan Dmitrievich

According to one hypothesis, it comes from the kind of Slobozhansky Cossack colonel Fyodor Donets, whose descendants received noble ranks and changed their name to the Russian style ^[1] . However, documentary evidence of this hypothesis was not found ^[2] .

The Dontsov family settled in the Melitopol region in the first half of the 19th century, taking advantage of the guaranteed benefits for immigrants guaranteed by the government and acquiring 1,500 acres of virgin black soil.

Ivan Dontsov departed from the grain-farming family tradition. He leased the land, and he settled in Melitopol and engaged in the sale of agricultural machinery. His business was successful. He acquired several large houses, which he also leased out.

Dontsov was interested in Ukrainian culture. In his library were books by Gogol , Shevchenko , Kulish , Storozhenko . The Dontsov family went to the Ukrainian theater during a tour of Ukrainian troupes in Melitopol ^{[1] [2]} .

In the spring of 1873, Ivan Dontsov was elected to the first city duma in the history of Melitopol, becoming one of its 42 vowels ^[3] .

March 10, 1894 he was elected mayor of Melitopol for the four-year period of 1894-1897. But on April 11, 1894, he died, having not yet had time to take office ^{[3] [4]} . Instead, Aleksey Pankeev became the mayor ^[3] .

Wife - according to modern official data - Efrosinya Iosifovna (c. 1846-1895). Born in a Ukrainian family of Italian-German descent. She grew up in the house of an adoptive father, a German colonist. Died a year after the death of her husband. In a letter to Yevgeny Malanyuk in 1931, Dmitry Dontsov himself wrote about his family: “the Tavrian, that is, mixed, grandfather did not learn Russian until the end of his life, his mother was called Francis (Frania) (not Efrosinya), aunt Polina, their stepfather was a German colonist; my mother told me that my great-grandmother was Italian; ... a Ukrainian was made of me: Gogol, Shevchenko, Kulish and Storozhenko. ”

Five children, 3 sons and 2 daughters. The middle son was Dmitry (1883-1973) - a Ukrainian publicist and politician, ideologist of Ukrainian nationalism. Raised by father and mother, older brother and sister became members of the RSDLP, and then prominent figures of the CPSU (b). Since the elder brother and sister, as professional revolutionaries, were wanted by the authorities, after the death of the parents of Dmitry and younger children, the relatives of the mother took up the education. In particular, after the death of Dmitry Dontsov’s mother, he was raised by his mother’s adoptive father, who did not speak either Russian, Ukrainian, or literary German. However, Dmitry Dontsov not only fluently spoke the local Ukrainian dialect of German as a grandfather, but independently continued to improve his mother’s literary German as well. Both the Russian that he learned in his father’s and mother’s house and the German language were equally native to him, but he failed to learn the Ukrainian language, and he actively opposed Soviet Ukrainization, since he considered the Ukrainians to be a race, and the unity of the Ukrainian race was by no means based on Ukrainian language. ^{[1] [2]} .