Konstantin Iurenev

(real name, K. K. Krotovskii). Born 1888 in Dvinsk (now Daugavpils); died Aug. 1, 1938. Participant in the Russian revolutionary movement and Soviet diplomat.

Iurenev, the son of a railroad watchman, became a member of the RSDLP and a Bolshevik in 1905. He became a member of the Dvinsk committee of the RSDLP in 1906 and the Northwestern Regional Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP in 1908. In 1911 he undertook party work in St. Petersburg, where he was a contributor to the newspaper Pravda and the journal Prosveshchenie. In 1913 he helped organize the Mezhraiontsy.

After the February Revolution of 1917, Iurenev became a member of the executive committee of the Petrograd soviet. He was a delegate to the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets and a member of the Central Executive Committee. He was a delegate to and a member of the Presidium of the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP(B), at which he and his fellow Mezhraiontsy were once again accepted into the party. In September and October 1917 he held two posts with the Red Guards: he was a member of the central command and chairman of the bureau of headquarters. In 1918 and 1919 he was a member of the collegium of the People’s Commissariat for Military Affairs, a member of the All-Russian Collegium on the Formation of the Red Army, and chairman of the All-Russian Bureau of Military Commissars; he was a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Eastern Front from April to August 1919 and of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Western Front from October 1919 to January 1920.

In 1920, Iurenev was initially a member of the Moscow committee of the RCP(B) and subsequently chairman of the Kursk provincial executive committee and a member of the provincial committee of the party. Between 1921 and 1937 he served as plenipotentiary representative in Bukhara, Latvia, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Iran, Austria, and Japan. Iurenev was a delegate to the Eighth and Ninth Congresses of the RCP(B).