Early years Boris Spiridonovich Stomonyakov was born 15 June 1882 O.S. in
Odessa,
Ukraine, then part of the
Russian Empire. He joined the
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1902, suffering arrest and deportation from the country two years later. Stomonyakov continued his revolutionary activities on behalf of the
Bolshevik wing of the RSDLP in exile until 1910, when he abruptly dropped out of the revolutionary movement. He went to
Bulgaria in 1915 and was inducted into the Bulgarian Army, fighting against Russia during
World War I until 1917, when he was transferred to work in the Bulgarian embassy in the
Netherlands. After termination of hostilities in the World War, Stomonyakov returned to Germany, where he began to work for the new Bolshevik government of
Soviet Russia. Stomonyakov was named the official trade representative of the Soviet government in
Berlin in 1921, a position which he would retain until 1924.
Diplomatic career In 1924 Stomonyakov relocated to the
Soviet Union, taking up a post in the legal department of the
People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs (Narkomindel). His work attracted the notice of Deputy People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs
Maxim Litvinov, and Stomonyakov was soon placed in charge of international relations between the USSR and Poland and the
Baltic states of
Lithuania,
Latvia, and
Estonia. Stomonyakov was made a member of the governing Collegium of Narkomindel in 1926. Stomonyakov was named Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs in 1934.
Arrest, execution, and legacy Stomonyakov was arrested on 17 December 1938. He was found guilty by the
Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR of participating in a counterrevolutionary Trotskyite organization which spied on behalf of Germany and Poland and sentenced to death. Stomonyakov was executed on 16 October 1940. He was
posthumously rehabilitated in 1988, during the period of
perestroika and critical reexamination of the abuses and crimes of the Soviet past. ==Footnotes==