Konstantin Yurenev


Konstantin Konstantinovich Yurenev, also known as Konstantin Konstantinovich Krotovsky , was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician and diplomat.

Life and career

Yurenev was born at Dvinsk station on the Riga-Orlov railway. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1905, and was drafted into the Imperial Russian Army in 1916, but escaped serving. He joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party in 1917 and held various positions within the Petrograd division of the party. After serving on the Petrograd Military-Revolutionary Committee, in February 1918 he was a member of the People's Commissariat for Military Affairs of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. He was concurrently a member of a committee which went on to form the Red Army. From May 1920 to May 1921 he was the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Kursk Governorate Soviet.
From 16 May 1921 until 1 February 1922 he was Plenipotentiary Representative of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic. After serving in Bukhara, from 1 February 1922 to 14 February 1923 he was Soviet Russia's Plenipotentiary Representative in Latvia. After his posting to Latvia, he was then appointed as diplomatic representative of the Soviet Union to Czechoslovakia, and served in Prague from 14 February 1923 until 3 March 1924, after which he was the Plenipotentiary Representative of the Soviet Union to Italy from 7 March 1924 to 4 April 1925.
From 24 April 1925 to 5 August 1927 he 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.
On 23 September 1937 he was arrested during the Great Purge, and eventually executed on 1 August 1938. He was rehabilitated in 1956.