One of the most popular video bloggers in Russia is undoubtedly Nikolai Sobolev. He has over five million YouTube subscribers. Sobolev is widely known for his scandalous news reviews, music videos and giveaways.
Biography
Nikolai Sobolev was born on June 18, 1993 in the northern capital of the country. He tells quite little about his family, but it is known that parents often spoiled future talent and did not experience financial problems. His father managed to achieve considerable success in entrepreneurship, and his mother devoted herself to work at the Mariinsky Theater. From an early age, the boy was taught a love of art and sports. He attended the martial arts section, was fond of bodybuilding and even learned the basics of professional singing, due to which, in his youth, he managed to work as a vocalist in a cabaret.
Sobolev graduated from the prestigious gymnasium No. 56 and entered the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, receiving a diploma in economics in 2015. In his student years, he met with fellow student Guram Narmania, who is of Georgian origin. Together they often performed at student evenings with funny scenes and gradually began to think about turning an artistic hobby into a profitable business. This is how the RAKAMAKAFO YouTube channel was born (simplified pronunciation of the phrase "Rock the microphone" from the popular song "Freestyler" by Boomfunk MC`s).
Creative career
Nikolai and Guram recorded funny interviews with passers-by on the streets and gradually began to stage social experiments, for example, they played the roles of a bully and his victim, filming the reactions of passers-by with a hidden camera. Also on the channel there were pranks - funny pranks of passers-by and friends of video bloggers on a variety of topics. The audience liked the work of the tandem, and soon there were already several million subscribers on RAKAMAKAFO.
By this time, Sobolev and Narmania firmly decided that they intend to develop and make money in the field of video blogging. In 2016, they started experimenting more and launched solo channels. Sobolev created the Life YouTube platform and began publishing news reviews of events taking place in the world of Russian video blogging. The channel quickly gained several hundred thousand subscribers, but still was inferior in popularity to RAKAMAKAFO.
A real boom occurred in early 2017, when Sobolev began posting his own opinions on the channel about various scandalous events taking place in the country, for example, the arrest of blogger and auto-columnist Eric Davydych. Then he shot a video on the rape of a minor Diana Shurygina, which, according to her, was allegedly committed by her unfamiliar friend Sergei Semyonov, who was subsequently sentenced to imprisonment for this. The blogger was noticed on television and was invited to take part in the filming of the TV show "Let Them Talk" with the participation of Diana Shurygina.
After the TV broadcast, the number of Nikolai Sobolev's subscribers increased sharply and soon exceeded the two million mark. In addition to news reviews, the guy posted video clips for songs of his own composition on the channel, and also criticized certain representatives of the blogosphere, which is why he entered into conflicts with such media personalities as the Restaurateur, Ruslan Sokolovsky, Likey, Yuri Khovansky and others. But this only fueled the interest of the audience even more. Having become one of the key bloggers on the Russian YouTube, Nikolai renamed the channel to SOBOLEV.
Sobolev repeatedly took part in joint work with other bloggers, appearing on the channels of Yuri Dudy, Eldar Dzharakhov, Alexei Stolyarov, Sergey Druzhko and others. He also continued to cooperate with representatives of television, starring in several more episodes of the program "Let the Talk", as well as in television projects of the channels "Russia 1" and "TNT". In addition, the blogger has released his own book "YouTube: the path to success".
Personal life and further success
By the time of the creation of his first channel, Sobolev was already in a relationship with a girl named Yana Khanikeryan. She sometimes appeared in blogger's videos. But around 2016, the couple broke up. The reason was Nikolai's new beloved, Polina Chistyakova, who has a model appearance. The couple met until 2019 and even thought about the wedding, but suddenly surprised fans with the news of the breakup. Sobolev does not name the reason. Most likely, the former lovers were simply tired of the relationship and stopped having the same passionate feelings for each other as before.
Currently, Sobolev is releasing new videos with a frequency of 1-2 per month. He travels a lot and actively maintains his Instagram account. One of the last hobbies of a talented young man is business. At first, Nikolai tried his hand at fashion, releasing his own clothing line, and in 2019 he became one of the co-founders of the HYPE restaurant in St. Petersburg. Sobolev is known for his love of luxury and recently won the state-of-the-art BMW i8. According to rumors, he also owns luxury real estate in St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Nikolai calls himself a moderately modest and cheerful guy, although in public he prefers to behave deliberately arrogant, which has become one of his trademarks. The blogger has enough not only fans, but also detractors - the so-called haters (English to hate - to hate). And yet Nikolai tries to avoid any conflicts, happily communicating with subscribers through social networks.
