Education
Moscow Aviation Institute.
Moscow Aviation Institute.
He was first secretary of the Soviet Embassy in Washington District of Columbia in 1953, and served a second time in Washington as the minister-counselor and second-ranking officer of the Embassy at the beginning of the 1960s. Around 1963 Smirnovsky returned to the Foreign Ministry in Moscow, where he was chief of the United States of America section of the Ministry. In 1966 he became Soviet Ambassador to the United Kingdom (with concurrent accreditation in Malta starting in 1967), where he served until 1973.
He was a player in United States-Soviet relations at critical times, including the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
Smirnovsky was viewed by American colleagues as an efficient, businesslike diplomat who, in contrast to many other Soviet officials, eschewed rudeness and avoided unnecessary exaggeration.
lieutenant is believed that he was later, in Moscow, a member of the Foreign Ministry"s Collegium, understood to have been an advisory group of senior officers.