Egor Aleksandrovich Prosvirnin (; 3 April 1986 – 27 December 2021), also known by his pen name Egor Pogrom () was a Russian right-wing opinion journalist, political commentator and activist, best known as the founding editor-in-chief of the online outlet Sputnik and Pogrom, which was active from 2012 to 2018. He began his writing career in video game magazines and on the blogging platform LiveJournal before launching Sputnik and Pogrom in 2012, where he published articles on history, politics, and culture. Through his work in the 2010s, Prosvirnin became a prominent voice within Russia's nationalist and national-democratic movements, later shifting toward monarchist views.
A committed nationalist who was frequently critical of many state initiatives, Prosvirnin became, from 2014 onward, one of the most ardent supporters of Russia's annexation of Crimea and of comprehensive Russian backing for the separatist Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic in eastern Ukraine. However, in 2015, a criminal investigation was launched over a number of extremist statements published on the Sputnik and Pogrom website, Prosvirnin was named as a witness in the case. In 2017, the site was blocked within Russia, and the publication was shuttered for good in 2018. Following the closure of Sputnik and Pogrom, Prosvirnin continued his career as a blogger and commentator, hosting livestreams on his YouTube channel Czar where he discussed major socio-political issues. On 27 December 2021, Prosvirnin died after falling from the balcony of an apartment building in Moscow.
In the wake of his death, a number of authors described him as one of the most talented Russian opinion journalists of the 2010s, praising the literary craft and stylistic flair of his prose, even as assessments of his ideological positions remained sharply divided.
Biography Early years Egor Prosvirnin was born in Vladivostok. His mother was a theater artist and set designer, while his father, was a theater actor and stage director.
Prosvirnin described himself as "a bookish homeboy who was given a thick children's encyclopedia at the age of seven". After his family moved to Reutov, he enrolled in the Philological Faculty of the Russian State University for the Humanities but did not graduate, what he later claimed he never regretted. He began building his journalism career by contributing to various magazines on a wide range of topics, including video game coverage. His work appeared in gaming publications such as Strana Igr, Igromania, PC Gamer, and others. He said he was raised on the "elitist" magazine Game.EXE, which he believed stood out for publishing articles on culture and politics and for its disdain for mainstream tastes.
In 2008, he became the editor-in-chief of the inflight magazine for the airline Aeroflot, where he commissioned journalist Oleg Kashin to conduct interviews with decorated Russian pilots and famous passengers (such as opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya), as well as to write pieces on the history of various professions and trades. He ran a popular LiveJournal blog under the handle nomina_obscura, contributed to Russian Journal, Literaturnaya gazeta, and Kommersant, and published a science fiction novel online titled Georges Dunaev (2006). Overall, Prosvirnin spoke negatively about his time working in gaming media, hinting at rigid censorship.
An active blogger on LiveJournal, Prosvirnin gained a reputation in the mid-2000s for writing whose tone and subject matter largely foreshadowed the future content of Sputnik and Pogrom. Notably, Prosvirnin's LiveJournal blog was once promoted by Anton Nossik, a pioneer of Runet, who praised it for having "original thoughts, a solid grasp of the material, a decent sense of humor, and fair winds".
Prosvirnin identified himself as part of the Moscow middle class that had "traded political rights to the authorities in exchange for prosperity", though at some point he was forced to reassess his views on life. On 13 April 2007, Prosvirnin took part in the Dissenters' March organized by Eduard Limonov's The Other Russia party and was detained (among 250 others arrested that day). In 2011, he participated in the mass protests on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, standing amid a crowd he described as "skinheads". In 2012, he made his first and only appearance at the Russian march in Lyublino, declaring a year later that he did not support the event and would not participate again. However, according to politician Dmitry Demushkin, despite Prosvirnin's refusal to attend, he assisted in creating promotional materials (including graphics) for the Russian march.
Sputnik and Pogrom On 28 April 2012, Prosvirnin created a group called Sputnik and Pogrom on the Russian social network VKontakte, and in 2013 he launched the official website of the same name. He maintained, however, that the project had actually begun as a LiveJournal blog before evolving into a VKontakte community and eventually a full-fledged website. The site's emergence was tied to the protest movement of that era, a time of active public debate in the country, marked by "rallies and hopes for imminent change", which Prosvirnin himself supported. The name combines two of the most recognizable Russian loanwords in other languages, representing what he saw as "the two extremes of the Russian people": Sputnik as the "triumph of reason", and Pogrom as the "unleashing of the elemental popular spirit". Prosvirnin described the journal's ideology as "intellectual nationalism" that appealed not to raw emotion but to reason, drawing on Russian intellectual tradition as well as constitutional, social, and political concepts from various countries around the world.
Prosvirnin served as editor-in-chief of Sputnik and Pogrom. The site featured both his satirical feuilletons, "gushing with fury and audacious jokes", and serious essays on history, music, and literature. Particularly popular were stories recounting feats of the Russian military (for example, Colonel Karyagin's campaign, the siege of Osowiec Fortress, and the manhunt for Vasily Chapayev). Prosvirnin's team included philosophy graduates and employees from leading Moscow studios (including some citizens of European Union countries). Contributors to Sputnik and Pogrom at various times also included journalist Oleg Kashin, philosopher Konstantin Krylov, commentator Yegor Kholmogorov, and activist Maria Butina.
In 2013, the outlet's core readership consisted of middle-class individuals aged 25 to 30 who identified with neither liberalism nor communism. By 2017, the audience had shifted primarily toward educated urban youth. Prosvirnin eschewed populist rhetoric, viewing this as a key distinction between his outlet and other nationalist projects, and he staunchly defended the thesis that "nationalism is an urban phenomenon". Some content on the site was behind a paywall, as Prosvirnin argued that this business model was the only way to ensure both the prosperity and the independence of journalists. Prosvirnin himself maintained subscriptions to foreign periodicals such as Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, and The New York Times.
As of 2013, the publication had roughly 4,000 subscribers each on Facebook and Twitter, but about five times that number on its VKontakte page. Prosvirnin's project caught the attention of mainstream media: the Russian television channel NTV aired a segment describing the project as "nationalism with a human face". In 2014, the site garnered significant interest in Ukraine, with around 70,000 monthly visits originating from Ukrainian territory. By summer of that year, the outlet had 5,000 paid subscribers. In 2017, monthly unique visitors reached 750,000, with total visits amounting to 1.5 million. A standard news article on the site would garner roughly 15,000 views.
Among those who shared articles from the outlet on social media at various times were prominent figures such as Alfred Koch, Sergey Parkhomenko, Masha Gessen, Alexei Navalny, Sergey Minaev, Anatoly Chubais, Ksenia Sobchak, and Igor Girkin. At the end of 2013, Colta.ru ranked Prosvirnin second on its list of Russia's most influential public intellectuals.
The website's visual design was highly praised by critics, and the reflections found in its articles were considered "living human thought, with all its merits and flaws", though occasionally the authors "in a fit of graphomania, would write God knows what". Prosvirnin juxtaposed photographs of Nicholas II with contemporary design and modern slogans, blending patriotic agitation with "teenage insolence". As a result, he succeeded in instilling in a generation of cultured young people an interest not only in globalization and the new ethics", but also in Russian nationalism, the Russian Empire, and monarchy. Regarding the design, Prosvirnin noted influences ranging from classicism to the aesthetics of the New Europe, but added that he had to employ the "visual language of postmodern urban youth" to tell certain stories, often laced with bitter or angry irony.
Financially, the outlet was not profitable. In 2013, Prosvirnin's total income from reader subscriptions and voluntary donations was lower than the salary of a news reporter at a "mid-level editorial office", forcing him to purchase advertising in large online communities. By 2017, ad revenue accounted for only about 10% of the site's total income. The average monthly budget was around US$10,000, and Prosvirnin paid his staff in US dollars. By his own estimation, only one out of every 1,000 visitors purchased a subscription, and the site did not receive large individual donations. In 2017, Prosvirnin planned to launch a paid comment system to sustain the site's future, although he considered comments inciting ethnic hatred unacceptable. By 2018, according to Finnish researcher Jussi Jussila, Sputnik and Pogrom had become the most popular opposition nationalist outlet on the Runet.
On 6 July 2017, the Prosecutor General's Office directed the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media to block the website Sputnik and Pogrom, accusing the outlet of promoting national and religious strife that incites extremism. Notably, the order did not specify which exact pages contained the alleged propaganda. Prosvirnin denounced the Prosecutor General's demand as unlawful, speculating that the site's closure might be tied to Vladimir Putin's presidential campaign ahead of the 2018 presidential race, a period during which pressure on certain media outlets intensified. He noted that there had been previous attempts to shut the site down. According to Prosvirnin's estimate at the time of the block, the site had enough subscriber funds to operate for another two to three months, but a steady monthly decline in subscribers threatened to slash its revenue.
Access to the site was subsequently blocked across Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. The restrictions caused an immediate drop in traffic, halting a six-month period of organic audience growth achieved without any advertising spend, though in July 2018, the site's pages still registered 587,000 views. Prosvirnin explored several options for the site's future following the block, but his account with the payment platform Tinypass was soon suspended due to unresolved disputes. The closure drew criticism from Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, though no public rallies were held in support of the outlet.