Sergey Paramonov (entomologist)

Sergey Jacques Paramonov (4 November 1894, Kharkiv – 22 September 1967, Canberra) was a Soviet and Australian entomologist, specializing on flies (Diptera), of which described about 700 species and subspecies. Paramonov published over 185 scientific articles, some of which were published posthumously.
Spellings of the name and pseudonym.
In his first article, that was written in the Russian Empire in the , his name was given as С. Я. Парамоновъ and translated into English as S. I. Paramonov. In articles written in [[Ukrainian language]] he signed as С. Парамонов or С. Я. Парамонов, the same as in [[Russian language]], in [[German language]] he used spelling of his name S. J. Paramonow.
When he arrived in [[Australia]], his full name was filled as Paramonov, Sergey Jacques in his "form for application of registration". His scientific articles written in Australia were signed as S. J. Paramonov. Although in private life he often used Ukrainian [[transliteration]] of his full name Сергій Якович Парамонів - Serhiy Yakowich Paramoniv, and the inscription on his [[gravestone]] is written in this way.
Sergey Paramonov signed his works in Russian about the ancient history of the [[East Slavs]] and [[literature]] writings with the [[pseudonym]] Сергей Лесной - Sergey Lesnoy.
Biography.
Early life.
Sergey Jacques Paramonov was born on 4 November 1894 in [[Kharkiv]], which was part of the [[Russian Empire]] at that time. Both his parents came from the village near [[Odessa]]. His father's full name was Yakiv Yukhymovych Paramonov. Sergey Paramonov's paternal grandparents were [[peasant]]s. Sergey's mother's full maiden name was Olha Ivanivna Buravchuk. Her father Ivan Maksymovych Buravchuk was a well-educated and respectful person, he worked as an [[agronomist]]. Olha's mother was descended of [[serfs]].
Sergey's father Yakiv studied at [[Kherson]] Agricultural Institute, where he obtained the [[forester]] qualification. During his studying Yakiv Paramonov got under influence of the [[Narodniks]] movement, as the result he was taking part in student unrest and was arrested in 1893, together with the future [[Bolshevik]] functionary [[Alexander Tsiurupa]]. At the beginning of 1894 Yakiv Paramonov married Olha Buravchuk and soon their first son Sergey was born in Kharkiv.
In his known letter to the mother Sergey Paramonov mentioned Raikivtsi, where she had nursed him as a toddler. It is probably the village in [[Podolia]], but this village is not mentioned in any known S. Paramonov's official documents.
In 1902 the Paramonov family moved into [[Polotsk]], where their second son Oleksiy was born in March 1903. From 1904 to 1908 Yakiv Paramonov worked as a forester in the [[Nizhny Novgorod Governorate]]. At that time Sergey was studying at [[Veliky Ustyug]] [[Gymnasium (school)|Gymnasium]], which was more than 50 kilometres from their home through difficult forest roads.
In 1908 the family moved closer to their home village Yasky. Yakov Paramonov got a job as a forester on the opposite bank of the [[Dniester]] river in [[Cioburciu, Ștefan Vodă|Cioburciu]] village, now in [[Moldova]], of the [[Bessarabia Governorate]]. Therefore, Sergey Paramonov continued his education in the [[uyezd]] centre at Akkerman Gymnasium, now [[Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi]], Ukraine.
Kiev period.
[[File:Università San Vladimir di Kiev.jpg|thumb|Kiev University at the time of Paramonov's study]]
In 1912 Sergey Paramonov graduated from [[Akkerman]] Gymnasium and entered [[Kiev University]]. He choose Zoology as a main subject, his favourite branch was [[Ornithology]] at that time.
Despite the fact that in all known official documents Paramonov was mentioned as an ethnic Russian, he took part in the [[Ukrainian National Revival]] movement. In 1914 and 1915 Ukrainian organizations were trying to conduct the celebration of [[Taras Shevchenko]]'s 100 years anniversary, as a result the police arrested some activists. During these events Sergey was detained twice for a month each time. To avoid more serious punishment Paramonov was helped by the [[privatdozent]] Viktor Kazanovsky's protection.
In 1915 Sergey Paramonov published his first scientific note "On the record of the [[spotted cuckoo]] in [[Bessarabia]]n Government" in the Ornithological Journal. He found, a very rare bird in the [[Russian Empire]], the spotted cuckoo by himself while he was having a holiday at his parents' in [[Cioburciu, Ștefan Vodă|Cioburciu]].
In spite of World War I and the collapse of the Russian Empire, Sergey managed to successfully graduate from Kiev University in 1917 and to get a job at the Kiev's station of plant pest control, where Viktor Kazanovsky worked as a director. It was the first time when Sergey faced practical [[dipterology]]. In particular he worked on a problem how to use parasitic flies as a natural limit of a number of pest insects.
In September 1918 the Kiev's station of plant pest control was moved to the village of Starosillia near [[Chernobyl]] because of the [[Ukrainian–Soviet War]]. On 14 November 1918 the [[Ukrainian Academy of Sciences]] was established by order of the [[Hetman of Ukraine]] [[Pavlo Skoropadskyi]]. On 1 May 1919 the Academy opened the . The biologist was a museum director and the collection manager was the entomologist .
After the [[Red Army]] captured Kiev in November 1919, the teacher of Sergey, Mr Kazanovsky, died in mysterious way, so Sergey Paramonov started supporting his widow and children. After a while in 1920 he married to Kazanovsky's widow Svitlana, who was 13 years older than him. It might have been just a [[Christian marriage]] because [[Soviet]] authorities did not recognise it. Sergey Paramonov was mentioned as a [[single person]] in all Soviet documents.
[[File:55 Volodymyrska Street, Kiev-1930.jpg|thumb|The Ukrainian Academy of Sciences building in 1930 where the Zoological Museum was located.]]
In 1920 Paramonov started working at the Zoolofical Museum of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He donated to the museum his own collection of more than 12 thousand copies of the [[diptera]] and 64 skins of birds. In 1923–25 he had the scientific expeditions to the [[Crimea]] and [[Transcaucasia]] under the aegis of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. In 1924 Vienna entomological journal "Konowia" published three of Paramonov's articles about new [[species]] of the [[Syrphidae]] and [[Bombyliidae]] [[Family (biology)|families]], followed by other publications about the [[Diptera]] [[Order (biology)|order]] in domestic and foreign [[scientific journal]]s. In 1926 he set off the expeditions to [[Central Asia]] and in 1927 to [[Armenia]]. The result of these expeditions and the further [[scientific research]] and [[systematics]] became his four large [[monograph]]s. In 1928 Paramonov went for research work to the [[Museum für Naturkunde]] in [[Berlin]]. He met with his colleagues, entomologists [[Günther Enderlein]] and [[Erich Martin Hering]], there.
In 1930 the [[I. I. Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology|Institute of Zoology]] of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences was established and the [[evolutionist]] [[Ivan Schmalhausen]] became its first director. Paramonov started working as an editor-in-chief of the Institute journal. In 1935 he conducted a research in [[Pryazovia]] ([[Sea of Azov]] coast). In 1938 during the [[Political repression in the Soviet Union]] Sergey's father Yakiv was arrested and executed.
In 1940 Sergey Parmonov wrote and defended the thesis "[[Palearctic]] [[Bombyliidae]]", thus he earned the [[Doctor of Sciences]] in Biology, soon he was appointed as a director of the Zoological Museum.
On 19 September 1941 [[Nazi Germany]] captured Kiev. According to memoirs of his colleague the zoologist Yevdokia Reshetnyk, Paramonov saved several building including the [[Ukrainian opera house]], the Academy of Science, and others by pointing Germans to places where [[Bolsheviks]] had laid explosives to blow the opera house up.
Paramonov was going on working at the Zoological Museum though he stopped holding the director post. Germans appointed the zoologist as a director because he was a [[volksdeutsche]]. At the time of Nazi occupation the Austrian entomologist [[Karl E. Schedl]] was working at the Ukrainian Zoological Museum too. Germans decided to evacuate the museum because of the Soviet advance, so Nazis declared museum exhibits as war trophies and sent them to [[Poznań]].
Emigration.
[[File:Fly (Tachina fera) side.jpg|thumb|One of the Paramonov's objects of study - the family Tachinidae]]
In September 1943 Sergey Paramonov had to accompany exhibits of the to [[Poznań]] and then in 1945 to Berlin, some of them still have been keeping in the [[Museum für Naturkunde]]. In April 1945 Nazis arrested him and wanted to shoot. Paramonov managed to save his life by protection of a "familiar professor", who might have been [[Erich Martin Hering]]. Escaping Sergey Paramonov fled to [[Hanover]] then to [[Bachenberg]]. Some sources say that he was put into the [[Nazi concentration camp]] near [[Munden]], but the [[German Red Cross]] does not prove it. When forces of allies captured this part of Germany, Paramonov went to Paris.
In June 1945 he arrived in Paris. Here Paramonov got in a difficult position because he did not have any livelihoods. Therefore, he wrote letters to his friends-scientists for help to find an appropriate job corresponding his knowledge and qualification. Thus [[Theodosius Dobzhansky]] offers him a place in his laboratory in the United States to study the [[drosophilid]] taxonomy. Another Sergey's friend the entomologist [[Boris Uvarov]] asked the chief of [[CSIRO]] [[Alexander John Nicholson]] about vacancies in Australia. In fact, after [[André Léon Tonnoir]]'s death in 1940, CSIRO was looking for an experienced entomologist-taxonomist, so in October 1946 Paramonov was offered to apply for a job at CSIRO. While there were being bureaucratic formalities, he left for London to study Australian diptera at the [[British Museum]].
In March 1947, Sergey Paramonov came to Australia. On arrival, he faced a number of problems. The issue of his appointment at CSIRO was raised by MP [[Joe Abbott (Australian politician)|Joe Abbott]] in the [[Parliament of Australia]] as he guessed that Paramonov might have been a [[Soviet spy]]. After thorough consideration, it was decided to keep the position at CSIRO for Paramonov, but to restrict him the access to certain areas in Australia for [[national security]] reasons. Another challenge was English language. Paramonov was not very good at English at first so he continued writing his scientific articles mainly in German in the first few years, thus there were some difficulties to publish them in Australia.
Since his English got better, Paramonov published his first article in Australia about the [[Mydidae]], followed by [[monograph]]s about: the [[Streblidae]], [[Microtropesa]] (1951), [[Nemestrinidae]], [[Apioceridae]] (1953), [[Cyrtidae]], [[Scenopinidae]], Tapeigaster ([[Neottiophilidae]]) (1955), Hirmoneura ([[Nemestrinidae]]), [[Cylindromyia]], [[Saralba]] ([[Tachinidae]]) (1956), [[Acroceridae]] (1957), [[Pyrgotidae]] (1958) and [[Leptidea]] (1962). His last lifetime article was а review of the Lygira ([[Bombyliidae]]) species in 1967. After his death, an article about the family [[Tachinidae]] was published in 1968. He also wrote small articles for the "Notes on Australian Diptera".
Sergey Paramonov took an active part in the [[Ukrainian Australians|Ukrainian community]] life. He was a parishioner of the [[Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church]]. He wrote articles for Ukrainian emigrant magazines, mostly about science and religion, which he signed as "Serhiy Paramoniv".
Sergey Lesnoy.
[[File:Дощечка Изенбека (Лесной).jpg|thumb|The photo of Izenbek's plank in Lesnoy's book - "The history of Rus' people in a not perverted form".]]
Being in Paris in 1945, Sergey Paramonov met the editor of the Russian [[emigrant]] S. Plautin. They were discussing the article of Paramonov's Kiev colleague the [[zoologist]] "[[The Tale of Igor's Campaign]] in terms of [[Natural science]]", which was published in [[Ukrainian language]] in 1940. As a result of the conversation, Paramonov was offered to write a small article for the Vozrozhdeniye with an analysis of Sharleman's work. Thus he wrote the article "[[The Tale of Igor's Campaign]] from the point of view of a [[naturalist]]" and signed it as "Sergey Lesnoy" for some reasons.
The pseudonym "Lesnoy" may come from his father's job - the forester. The Russian word "les ()" means a forest.
After writing his first article, the ancient history of the [[East Slavs]] became his topic of interest, so while he was living in Australia Paramonov wrote series of compositions about it. The compositions that were written in Russian he signed as Sergey Lesnoy. Besides that he tried himself in literature. His most significant works in Russian were:
The Book of Veles.
In 1954 Sergey Paramonov received the [[white émigré]] magazine "Zhar-ptitsa" ([[Firebird (Slavic folklore)|Firebird]]), which was published in [[San Francisco]], from . The magazine contained a letter from their Brussels' reader , where he reported about strange artifacts – carved planks, which had been found by near [[Kharkiv]], when he had been serving as a [[colonel]] of the [[Volunteer Army]]. According to Mirolubov after the [[White movement]] defeat, Izenbek took the planks in [[emigration]] and they were lost in Belgium during the [[Second World War]]. Mirolubov claimed that he had managed to copy down some texts of them.
Paramonov was very impressed that information and took from Kurenkov and Mirolubov all available materials about Izenbek's planks. Among other Paramonov gained a photograph of plank 16, there was the only one plank, the quality photo of which had been made. The text of that plank begins with the words: ""Влес книгу сію" ([[Veles (god)|Vles]] the book this)". So Paramonov decided to call the whole text of the Izenbek's planks as "Влесова Книга" or "The Book of Wles" in English.
[[File:Dr Paramoniv grave.jpg|thumb|The tomb of the scientist in the Woden Cemetery]]
Initially Sergey Paramonov believed in the [[Book of Veles]] authenticity and reckoned that it had been written in the [[Proto-Slavic language]]. He started studying and analyzing the text and wrote articles about it for Ukrainian and Russian emigrant magazines. In fact S. Paramonov made the information about the Book of Veles to be available for the general public. Eventually it resulted that the Book of Veles has become like the Bible for many [[Slavic neopaganism]] movements.
Paramonov needed to prove the Book of Veles authenticity so he sent all his researches and all materials, he had, to the [[Academy of Sciences of the USSR]] under the mediation of the [[University of Melbourne]]. The Soviet scientists verdict was: "The Book of Veles is a literary forgery".
Death.
During the last ten years of his life Sergey Paramonov severely suffered from [[arthritis]], [[angina]] and chronic [[nephritis]] . After the visit him by the [[slavist]] [[Boris Unbegaun]] in September 1967, who strongly criticised Paramonov's investigations into the Book of Veles, his health deteriorated significantly. On 18 September 1967 Sergey's younger brother Oleksiy died in [[Bordon]], England. On 19 September Sergey Paramonov was taken to a [[Canberra]] hospital where he died on 22 September 1967, in the age of 72.
Sergey Paramonov was buried in the [[Woden Cemetery]]. There are two inscriptions in English and Ukrainian on his gravestone:
Before his death Sergey Paramonov made a will according to which he left all his savings for the [[St. Nicholas]] [[Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church]] construction in Canberra.
After some time the St Nicholas church became a core of the Ukrainian Orthodox Centre, where the of the [[Holodomor|1932-1933 enforced famine-genocide in Ukraine]] was erected in 1985.
Further reading.
[[Category:1894 births]]
[[Category:1967 deaths]]
[[Category:Scientists from Kharkiv]]
[[Category:People from Kharkov Governorate]]
[[Category:Ukrainian entomologists]]
[[Category:Australian entomologists]]
[[Category:Soviet entomologists]]
[[Category:Ukrainian paleontologists]]
[[Category:Australian paleontologists]]
[[Category:Soviet paleontologists]]
[[Category:Ukrainian emigrants to Australia]]
[[Category:Soviet emigrants to Australia]]
[[Category:Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv alumni]]
[[Category:Ukrainian historians]]
[[Category:Ukrainian prisoners and detainees]]
[[Category:Prisoners and detainees of Russia]]
[[Category:Ukrainian victims of human rights abuses]]
[[Category:Modern Pagan writers]]
[[Category:Russian Modern Pagans]]
[[Category:Ukrainian Modern Pagans]]
[[Category:20th-century historians]]