Konstantin Yurenev

Konstantin Konstantinovich Yurenev , also known as Konstantin Konstantinovich Krotovsky (1888 – 1 August 1938), was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician and diplomat.

Life and career

Early revolutionary career Yurenev was born at Dvinsk station on the Riga-Orlov railway in the family of a railway watchman. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1905 and later its Bolshevik faction in 1906. In 1908, he was arrested and sentenced to three years' exile in Arkhangelsk. When his term of exile was completed, he settled in St Petersburg, but split with the Bolsheviks their leader Vladimir Lenin pronounced that all Mensheviks were to be expelled from the RSDLP. In 1913, he co-founded the 'Inter-Borough Organisation' or Mezhraiontsy, who were neither Bolsheviks nor Mensheviks, but were inspired by the writings of Leon Trotsky. Yurenev was arrested, but acquitted at his trial in 1916 for lack of evidence. Anticipating that the prosecutor would appeal, he hid out for two months, then moved to Simferopol, where he was arrested and drafted into the Imperial Russian Army, but absconded after about ten days and returned to Petrograd (St Petersburg) to live illegally.

Soviet official and diplomat During the Ninth Congress of the RCP (b) in March 1920, Yurenev again raised his long-held complaints about Bolshevik organisational methods. Possibly for that reason, he spent the rest of his career in positions well removed from the centre of power.

From May 1920 to May 1921 he was the chairman of the executive committee of the Kursk Governorate Soviet. |

In July 1924, he hosted a banquet in the embassy for Benito Mussolini, only a month after the murder of Giacomo Matteotti, which had revolted liberal and communist opinion in Italy. He followed it by inviting Mussolini to a reception to mark the 7th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. This provoked a protest from the Central Committee of the Italian Communist Party, and from the Comintern representative in Italy, Jules Humbert-Droz, who demanded Yurenev's dismissal. Alexander Barmine claimed that Yurenev ignored advice from his own staff and from Moscow by entertaining Mussolini,

From 24 April 1925 to 5 August 1927 Yurenev served as the Plenipotentiary Representative of the USSR in Persia; from 1 October 1927 to 24 January 1933 he was Plenipotentiary Representative of the Soviet Union in Austria; from 29 January 1933 until 16 June 1937 he was Plenipotentiary Representative of the Soviet Union in Japan, and from 16 June until 11 October 1937 he was Plenipotentiary Representative of the Soviet Union in Germany. And eventually executed on 1 August 1938.