Mikhail Tomsky

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Mikhail Tomsky
Михаил Томский
13th Orgburo
In office
2 June 1924 – 1 January 1926
In office
5 April 1920 – 16 March 1921
Personal details
Born
Mikhail Pavlovich Yefremov

(1880-10-31)31 October 1880
RSDLP (Bolsheviks) (1904–1918)
Russian Communist Party (1918–1936)
OccupationTrade unionist

Mikhail Pavlovich Tomsky (

Bolshevik leader and Soviet politician. He was the Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions in the 1920s.[1]

In his youth, Tomsky worked at the Smirnov Engineering factory in St. Petersburg, but was eventually dismissed from that job for attempting to organise a trade union.[2]

His labour activities radicalized him politically and led him to become a

Bolshevik faction of the party.[2]

During the

First Moscow Trial, at the onset of the Great Purge, Tomsky was implicated. He would later commit suicide to avoid arrest by the NKVD
in August 1936.

Early life (1880–1920)

Born in

1905 Revolution. He helped form the Revel Soviet of Workers' Deputies and the Revel Union of Metal Workers. Tomsky was arrested and deported to Siberia
.

He escaped and returned to St. Petersburg where he became president of the Union of Engravers and Chromolithographers.

Tomsky was arrested in 1908 and then exiled to

Labour and Capital
, whereas the new Commissariat was the champion of the economic policy of the working class.

Career (1920–1928)

Celebration of May 1 in Moscow 1926. From left: Mikhail Tomsky, Joseph Stalin and Mikhail Kalinin

He was elected to the

Central Committee in March 1919, to its Orgburo
in 1921 and to the Politburo in April 1922.

Tomsky was an ally of

Alexey Rykov
, who led the moderate (or right) wing of the Communist Party in the 1920s.

Together, they were allied with

Lenin
's death in 1924.

Demise (1928–1936)

In 1928 Stalin moved against his former allies, defeating Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky at the April 1929 Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee and forcing Tomsky to resign from his position as leader of the trade union movement in May 1929. Tomsky was put in charge of the Soviet chemical industry, a position which he occupied until 1930. He was not re-elected to the Politburo after the 16th Communist Party Congress in July 1930, but remained a full member of the Central Committee until the next Congress in January 1934, when he was demoted to candidate (non-voting) member.

Tomsky headed the State Publishing House from May 1932 until August 1936, when he was accused of terrorist connections during the

First Moscow Trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev.[3] Rather than face arrest by the NKVD, Tomsky committed suicide by gunshot in his dacha in Bolshevo, near Moscow.[2][3]

Legacy

Tomsky was posthumously found guilty of participation in an anti-Soviet conspiracy during the

Trial of the Twenty-One in March 1938.[3]

In 1988, during Perestroika, the Soviet government cleared Tomsky of all charges, and he was reinstated as a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.[3]

References

  1. ^ Wynn, Charters. From the Factory to the Kremlin: Mikhail Tomsky and the Russian Worker, University of Texas at Austin, 22 May 1996. University Center for International Research, University of Pittsburg, 10 September 2002, www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/1996-809-09-Wynn.pdf. Accessed 29 May 2021. "Archive" (PDF). Archived from the original on 29 April 2019. Retrieved 30 May 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  2. ^ a b c "Tomsky". Archived from the original on 2010-12-09. Retrieved 2011-02-20..
  3. ^ a b c d e "Tomsky, Mikhail Pavlovich". CHRONOS (in Russian). Vyacheslav Rumyantsev (editor of "CHRONOS"). Archived from the original on 10 August 2020. Retrieved 29 May 2021.

Bibliography

See also: Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union

External links

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