Mikhail Tomsky | |
|---|---|
Михаил Томский | |
 | |
| Chairman of the Presidium of theAll-Union Central Council of Trade Unions | |
| In office September 1922 – May 1929 | |
| Preceded by | Post established |
| Succeeded by | Alexander Dogadov |
| Secretary of theCentral Executive Committee of theAll-Russian Congress of Soviets | |
| In office 29 December 1921 – 28 December 1922 | |
| Preceded by | Pyotr Zalutsky |
| Succeeded by | Timofei Sapronov |
| Director of theAssociation of State Book and Mafazine Publishing Houses [ru] | |
| In office 1932–1936 | |
| Preceded by | Artemic Khalatov |
| Succeeded by | Pavel Yudin |
| General Secretary of theInternational Trade Union Council | |
| In office 1920 – 3 July 1921 | |
| President | Solomon Lozovsky |
| Preceded by | Post established |
| Succeeded by | Post abolished |
| Full member of the11th,12th,13th,14th,15thPolitburo | |
| In office 3 April 1922 – 13 July 1930 | |
| Full member of the10th,11th,12thOrgburo | |
| In office 16 March 1921 – 2 June 1924 | |
| Candidate member of the9th,13thOrgburo | |
| 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 |
| Died | 22 August 1936(1936-08-22) (aged 55) |
| Political party | RSDLP (Bolsheviks)(1904–1918) Russian Communist Party (1918–1936) |
| Occupation | Trade unionist |
Mikhail Pavlovich Tomsky (Russian: Михаи́л Па́влович То́мский), born Mikhail Pavlovich Yefremov (Russian: Ефре́мов) (31 October 1880 – 22 August 1936) was a factory worker,trade unionist, andSoviet politician. He was the Chairman of theAll-Union Central Council of Trade Unions in the 1920s.[1]
In his youth, Tomsky worked at the Smirnov Engineering factory inSt. Petersburg, but was eventually dismissed from that job for attempting to organise atrade union.[2] His labour activities radicalized him politically and led him to become asocialist and join theRussian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1904 and eventually join theBolshevik faction of the party.[2]
After therevolution, Tomsky was associated with the right wing faction of the party headed byNikolai Bukharin andAlexei Rykov, a group seeking orderly planning, a moderate tempo of industrialization, and eschewing rapid and forcedcollectivization of agriculture. Tomsky's primary bailiwick revolved around the trade union movement, of which he was the head and spokesman in the 1920s. An orientation towards trade union autonomy placed him in opposition to party radicals seeking rapid collectivization and strict party control over trade unions, leading to his downfall in 1928.
Tomsky was implicated in the investigation preceding theFirst Moscow Trial of 1936, an event which inaugurated theGreat Purge. He would subsequently commitsuicide to avoid arrest by theNKVD in August 1936.
Mikhail Tomsky was born inKolpino,Saint Petersburg Governorate, in a lower-middle-class family ofRussian ethnicity.[3] Tomsky moved toEstonia (then part of theRussian Empire) and was involved in the1905 Revolution. He helped form theRevelSoviet of Workers' Deputies and the Revel Union of Metal Workers. Tomsky was arrested and deported toSiberia.
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 toFrance, but returned to Russia in 1909 where he was again arrested for his political activities and sentenced to five years of hard labour. He was freed by theProvisional Government after theFebruary Revolution in 1917 and moved toMoscow, where he participated in theOctober Revolution. In 1918 he attended theFourth All Russian Conference of Trade Unions (12–17 March), where he moved a resolution concerning theRelations between the Trade Unions and theCommissariat for Labour which stated that the October Revolution had changed "the meaning and character of state organs and significance of proletarian organs as well". It was elaborated that previously the old ministry of Labour had acted as arbitrator betweenLabour andCapital, whereas the new Commissariat was the champion of the economic policy of the working class.
He was elected to theCentral Committee in March 1919, to itsOrgburo in 1921 and to the Politburo in April 1922.
Tomsky was an ally ofNikolai Bukharin andAlexey Rykov, who led the moderate (or right) wing of the Communist Party in the 1920s.
Together, they were allied withJoseph Stalin's faction and helped him purge theUnited Opposition — led byLeon Trotsky,Lev Kamenev, andGrigory Zinoviev — from the Party during the struggle that followedLenin's death in 1924.
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 the16th Communist Party Congress in July 1930, but remained a full member of the Central Committee until thenext 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 theFirst Moscow Trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev.[3] Rather than face arrest by theNKVD, Tomsky committed suicide by gunshot in hisdacha inBolshevo, nearMoscow.[2][3] Before committing suicide, he told his wife to tell the investigators that it wasGenrikh Yagoda who drove him to the path of opposition, which was later found byNikolai Yezhov.
Tomsky was posthumously found guilty of participation in an anti-Soviet conspiracy during theTrial of the Twenty-One in March 1938.[3]
In 1988, duringPerestroika, the Soviet government cleared Tomsky of all charges, and he was reinstated as a member of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union.[3]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)