Sergey Parkhomenko

Sergey Borisovich Parkhomenko (Russian: Серге́й Бори́сович Пархо́менко, born March 13, 1964) is a Russian publisher, journalist and political commentator.

Sergey Parkhomenko was born in Moscow in 1964 and graduated from the Department of Journalism of the Moscow State University. In early 1990s, he worked as a political reporter and columnist in Russian dailies such as Nezavisimaya Gazeta (Independent Newspaper) and Segodnia (Today).

In 1996, Parkhomenko founded Russia’s first news magazine Itogi (Summing Up), which was published in cooperation with Newsweek. Parkhomenko was the chief editor of the magazine until 2001, when the new owner fired the magazine’s entire team. Parkhomenko then launched a new news magazine, Yezhenedelnyi zhournal (Weekly Magazine), and was its editor-in-chief until 2003.

From 2004 to 2009, Parkhomenko successively headed several publishing houses (Inostranka, CoLibri, Atticus and Corpus). From October 2009 till the end of 2011, he headed the Vokrug sveta publishing house, where he was the chief editor of Russia’s oldest travel magazine by the same name.

Since 2003, Sergey Parkhomenko hosts the political talk show Sut’ Sobytiy (Crux of the Matter), which airs on the radio station Echo of Moscow.

Sergey Parkhomenko is known as an author or participant of various civic initiatives. In 1994 he was one of the founders of the Moscow Journalists’ Charter. In 2004 he became a member of Committee 2008 which tried to find a “democratic alternative” facing the upcoming presidential elections of 2008. Parkhomenko is also the author of the idea and the name of the public movement "Society of Blue Buckets" that fights against the privileged position of road vehicles with flashing lights (except for firefighters, police and ambulance); S. Parkhomenko was an organizer of the society’s first public events in spring 2010.

During Russia’s civic protest movement in 2011-2013, Sergey Parkhomenko was one of the leading figures of the movement. In the fall of 2012 he was elected a member of the Russian Opposition Coordination Council. Parkhomenko was instrumental in organizing mass rallies in Moscow in Winter 2011 – Spring 2012. In the spring of 2012, he co-founded the League of Voters and initiated mass lawsuits against government election fraud. This activity resulted in March 2013 in Constitutional Court of Russia hearing where the Court ruled that Russian voters should be allowed to appeal election results directly.

S. Parkhomenko is one of the founders (along with Andrey Rostovtsev, Andrey Zayakin and Mikhail Ghelfand) and an active popularizer of a voluntary networking community Dissernet whose activity aimed at purification of the Russian science from plagiarism, especially among Doctoral and post-Doctoral dissertations in Russia. Parkhomenko is also one of the initiators of the project Last Address. This project (based on the similar European project Stolperstein) implies installing a small (about the size of a palm) memorial plaque on the wall of the last house of a person subjected to political persecution in the Soviet years.

In 2014 Parkhomenko was a member of the Congress "Ukraine - Russia: A Dialogue", held in Kiev. In May 2014 S. Parkhomenko was elected a member of the Russian PEN Center, the Russian branch of the PEN International. In January 2017 he was expelled from the group for "provocative activity"; Parkhomenko claimed he was expelled for criticizing the Russian PEN Center for failing to support imprisoned (in Russia) Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov.

Since autumn 2016 года - a Public Policy Fellow in Kennan Institute, Washington DC.

• 1993 - the medal "Defender of the freedom in Russia".
• 2007 - France’s “Ordre des Arts et des Lettres”, for publishing activity.
• 2011 - Russian Government award in the area of print media. The award was ordered by the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to Parkhomenko and other publishers of the magazine Vokrug Sveta.
• 2013 – "Golden pen of Russia", a journalistic award for the year 2013, for popularizing "Dissernet" in press and in Internet.
• 2014 – the prize "Politprosvet" for the project "Dissernet". Prize was awarded to all co-founders of the project (including Andrey Rostovtsev, Mikhail Gelfand, Andrey Zayakin and Kirill Mikhailov) in two nominations: a special honorary nomination "For honor and dignity", and the nomination "People's vote".
• 2015 - the winner of «The Moscow Times Awards» for 2015 in the nomination "Personal Social Responsibility" for the project Last Address.

• Указ президента РФ от 18.03.1993 n 365 «О награждении медалью „Защитнику свободной России“ активных защитников конституционного строя»
• Сергею Пархоменко вручат иностранный орден
• «Распоряжение Правительства Российской Федерации от 31 октября 2011 г. N 1902-р г. Москва» // Российская газета
• Лауреаты премий Союза журналистов России за 2013 год
• Лев Гудков стал лауреатом премии "ПолитПросвет" сезона 2014!
• The Moscow Times Awards 2015 // Independent Media, 7.12.2015

• Married. Wife — Varvara Gornostaeva, Chief Editor of the Corpus publishing house
• 3 sons: Lev, Peter, Matvey

• Gornostaeva’s page on the site of Eisenhower Fellowships
• "Такая банда". Sergue Parkhomenkos’ blog (cook.livejournal.com). 2011-12-21. Archived from the original on 2013-05-30. Retrieved 2013-05-29. 

2012 — the film “Term”. Directors: Alexey Pivovarov, Pavel Kostomarov, Alexander Rastorguev.