Alexander Romanovich

Alexander Leonidovich Romanovich was born in Moscow on 15 October 1952. His father, Leonid Sergeyevich Romanovich, graduated from the Irkutsk aviation school in 1942 and served in the Soviet Army from 1941 to 1948, including throughout the Second World War. His mother, Maya Davydovna Goroshko, was born in Kharkiv in 1930, moved to Moscow with her parents in 1940 and graduated from the Plekhanov Institute of the National Economy.

He attended Moscow secondary school No. 455 and worked at the TASS news agency in 1969 and 1970 before studying in the Western languages faculty of the Military Institute of Foreign Languages from 1970 to 1975. He spoke French, Portuguese, Spanish and English. In 1973 and 1974, while still a student, he served as an interpreter in Mali. In 1976 he was sent to Cuba as senior interpreter for the Soviet chief military adviser.

From 1978 to 1981 he worked on the special faculty of the Gagarin Air Force Academy at Monino near Moscow, and from 1981 to 1984 he was a senior assistant in the office of the Soviet chief military adviser in São Tomé and Príncipe. Between 1984 and 1987 he was seconded to the International Department of the Communist Party Central Committee, interpreting for figures including Fidel Castro, the Portuguese communist leader Álvaro Cunhal and the Brazilian communist leader Giocondo Dias. From 1987 to 1989 he was a senior officer with the group of Soviet military advisers in Angola and Mozambique, and in 1989 and 1990 he served at the General Staff's directorate for international military cooperation. He left the armed forces in 1991 as a colonel in the reserve.

After leaving the military he went into business, heading the Drug holding. Its publishing house became the largest Russian publisher of periodicals for animal lovers, and he published the magazines Drug and Polny Privod 4x4. From 2002 to 2007 he was president and general director of Royal Canin Russia, the Russian and French pet food producer based in the Dmitrov district of Moscow Oblast, and from 2004 to 2007 he was president of the Russian association of pet food producers.

In March 1999 he founded and led the Million Friends ecological and humanitarian party, which drew on organisations of animal and nature lovers. In 2002 he was one of the founders of the Russian Party of Life and served as its executive committee secretary for international affairs until 2006. The party later became part of A Just Russia.

He was elected to the Dmitrov district council in 2005 and served in the Moscow Oblast Duma from 2007 to 2011, where he was deputy chairman of the committee on agrarian policy, land use, natural resources and ecology and led the A Just Russia group. In December 2011 he was elected to the State Duma from Moscow Oblast. There he was deputy chairman of the international affairs committee, sat in the Russian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and led the friendship group with the parliament of Portugal. On 25 March 2016 he was elected a deputy chairman of the State Duma, replacing Nikolai Levichev, and held the post until the convocation ended on 5 October 2016.

From April 2017 he was an adviser to Sergei Mironov, the leader of the A Just Russia faction. In March 2017 he was elected a vice-president of the Socialist International, with responsibility for Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. In 2020 A Just Russia nominated him as its candidate for governor of Sevastopol. At the time of his death he was secretary of the party's central council presidium for international policy and secretary of its council on the affairs of combat veterans.

Alongside politics he completed postgraduate study and a doctorate at the Russian Academy of Public Administration, earning a candidate degree in political science with a thesis on multiparty politics and a doctorate in philosophy on the safe development of social and natural systems. He was a professor in the academy's department of environmental economics and wrote on international relations, sustainable development, and food and environmental security.

From an early age Romanovich was interested in dog breeding and in cars and motorcycles. He took part in Russian and international rally and off-road trophy raids, including the Ladoga trophy in 2014. In August 2015 he was elected president of Moto-Spravedlivost, an all-Russian association of motorcyclists, saying that motorcycling in Russia had a contradictory image and that training and rules for riders needed to be developed.

His honours included medals of the Soviet armed forces, the medal For Rendering International Assistance to Angola, awards from the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, a certificate of honour from the Patriarch of Moscow for service to the Russian Orthodox Church and a certificate of honour from the State Duma.

Alexander Romanovich died on 11 August 2026, aged 73. A Just Russia announced his death on its website on 12 August, describing him as a comrade who had given 20 years to defending the country's interests on distant frontiers in Mali, Cuba, São Tomé and Príncipe, Angola and Mozambique. The party said his authority on international policy and on protecting the rights of combat veterans was unquestioned, and that his death was a heavy blow to party colleagues, fellow servicemen and friends. The place and cause of his death were not made public.

Romanovich is remembered as one of the Soviet military interpreters who moved into business and then politics after 1991, and as a long serving international spokesman for A Just Russia. His party credited him with contributing to Russian legislation, including on the rights of veterans, and with building its links to centre left parties abroad through the Socialist International.