From tsarist artillery officer to Stalin's first ambassador to Washington: a Russian nobleman who crossed revolution and diplomacy
At a White House reception, Roosevelt declared: 'If Mr. Troyanovsky says, looking at the moon, that this is the sun, I personally, gentlemen, will believe him.'
Alexander Troyanovsky was the first Soviet plenipotentiary to the United States, appointed in 1933 upon the establishment of diplomatic relations, and the architect of early cooperative ties with the Roosevelt administration. Born to hereditary nobility, trained as a tsarist artillery officer, he joined the Bolsheviks in 1904, broke with them for the Mensheviks in 1914, served on the Menshevik Central Committee and in the Constituent Assembly, then joined the Bolshevik Party in 1923 and entered Stalin's foreign-trade and diplomatic apparatus. As plenipotentiary to Japan (1927–1933) and then Washington, he negotiated the 1935 US–Soviet trade agreement and repeatedly urged Stalin to pursue rapprochement with America against Nazi Germany. His son Oleg Troyanovsky later served as Soviet Permanent Representative to the UN, founding one of the Soviet era's most durable diplomatic dynasties.
Career Timeline
- 1904Joined RSDLP (Bolshevik faction), Kiev military organization
- 1909–1910Exiled to Yenisei province, escaped and emigrated
- 1914–1917Menshevik-defencist, collaborated with Lenin and Stalin in exile
- 1918Menshevik Central Committee member, Constituent Assembly deputy
- 1918–1921Red Army service, instructor at Senior Instructors School
- 1923Joined RCP(b)
- 1924–1927Chairman of Gostorg RSFSR, collegium member Narkomvneshtorg
- 1927–1933Plenipotentiary Representative to Japan
- 1933Deputy Chairman, Gosplan
- 1933–1938Plenipotentiary Representative to the US — first ambassador
- 1939–1955Professor at Higher Diplomatic School, Sovinformburo