Troianovskii, Aleksandr

Born Jan. 1 (13), 1882, in Tula; died June 23,1955, in Moscow. Participant in the Russian revolutionary movement; Soviet diplomat. Professor (1947). Member of the RSDLP from 1904 and of the CPSU from 1923.

The son of an officer, Troianovskii graduated from artillery school in 1903 and served in the army from 1903 until 1906. In 1908 he was arrested and exiled for his revolutionary activities, but he escaped from exile in 1910 and fled abroad. Working with the Bolsheviks, he took part in the Ninth Congress of the Second International in 1912 and in the meetings of party workers with the Central Committee of the RSDLP in Kraków and Poronin in 1912 and 1913, respectively (seeKRAKÓW MEETING OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE RSDLP AND PARTY WORKERS and PORONIN 1913 MEETING OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE RSDLP WITH PARTY OFFICIALS). Troianovskii was a member of the foreign editorial staff of the journal Prosveshchenie (Enlightenment). In 1914 he became a Menshevik and a “defensist, ” supporting Russia’s participation in World War I on the grounds of national defense.

Troianovskii returned to Russia in 1917, and from 1918 to 1921 he worked as a teacher. He joined the staff of the People’s Commissariat of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection in 1921, and in 1924 he became chairman of the administrative board of Gos-torg (the State Import-Export Office) and a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Trade. He became the Soviet plenipotentiary to Japan in 1927 and to the USA in 1933. After 1939 he engaged in literary and pedagogical work. Troianovskii was a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.