At Swarthmore in the 1930s, Troyanovsky allegedly recruited his American classmate Stephen Laird as a Soviet spy.

In summer 1945, Troyanovsky worked as an interpreter at the London Conference that produced the London Agreement (August 8, 1945) by which the Soviet Union, the U.S., the United Kingdom, and France created the International Military Tribunal to try Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg.

In 1980, two members of a dissident Marxist group sneaked into the UN Security Council chamber and threw red paint on Troyanovsky and US Ambassador William vanden Heuvel.

In 1983, when listening to the recording of Soviet fighter pilots shooting down Korean Air Flight 007 jumbo jet near Moneron Island that killed carrying 269 people, Troyanovsky remained poker-faced and impassive.

Troyanovsky spent his retirement years working on his memoirs and giving lectures in Russia and abroad.