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. Since 1937 he worked in Komsomol and in 1939 joined the Communist Party of Soviet Union.
In 1939 Tronko was a member of the Western Ukrainian People's Assembly that voted in for the Western Ukraine to join the Ukrainian SSR.
During World War II he was a member of the South-western, Stalingrad, Southern, 4th Ukrainian fronts, participated in the defense of Kyiv and Stalingrad and later in the liberation of Rostov, Donbas, Left-bank Ukraine, and Kyiv. 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. In 1947 he was dismissed from the position due to accusations of Lazar Kaganovich in "nationalistic perversions".
In 1951-60 Tronko worked for the Kyiv regional committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and in 1960-61 he headed the department of propaganda and ideological agitation for the party. 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. He was a member of Verkhovna Rada for nine convocations.
In 1968 Tronko defended his doctorate dissertation "Ukrainian people in the fight against Hitlerites occupiers during the Great Patriotic War (1941-45)".
In 1969 Tronko initiated the creation of Pyrohiv scansen that was opened in 1976.[1]
He was a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. He was an advisor to the President Leonid Kuchma on the preservation of historical heritage.[2]
Shortly before his death, he suffered a stroke.[3] He was buried in Kyiv on the central alley of Baikove Cemetery.
A memorial plaque was installed in his honor, in his native village. In 2015, in Kyiv, the nameless passage between Zabolotny Street and the Pyrohiv Museum was named after academician Tronko.
