Born during World War I in 1915 to a peasant family in Sloboda Ukraine, Tronko started to work in 1932 in mines of Dzerzhynsk.

Eventually, after finishing some teaching classes, he worked as a teacher of social sciences and the Ukrainian language in the village school of Bohodukhiv Raion and as director of Lebedyn children's home.

One of the first, Tronko entered the liberated Kyiv on 6 November 1943 as a major and was appointed the first secretary of the city and regional Komsomol organization.

During the next 17 years (1961–78) Tronko worked as a Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR taking care of matters on culture, education, healthcare, press, book publishing, cinema, radio and television broadcasting, social sciences and archives.

In 1968 Tronko defended his doctorate dissertation "Ukrainian people in the fight against Hitlerites occupiers during the Great Patriotic War (1941-45)".