16 Facts About Mikhail Tomsky

Mikhail Pavlovich Tomsky, born Mikhail Pavlovich Yefremov was a factory worker, trade unionist, and Soviet politician.

Mikhail Tomsky was the Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions in the 1920s.

Mikhail Tomsky was implicated in the investigation preceding the First Moscow Trial of 1936, an event which inaugurated the Great Purge.

Mikhail Tomsky was born in Kolpino, Saint Petersburg Governorate in a lower-middle-class family of Russian ethnicity.

Mikhail Tomsky moved to Estonia and was involved in the 1905 Revolution.

Mikhail Tomsky helped form the Revel Soviet of Workers' Deputies and the Revel Union of Metal Workers.

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

Mikhail Tomsky was arrested in 1908 and then exiled to France, but returned to Russia in 1909 where he was again arrested for his political activities and sentenced to five years of hard labour.

Mikhail Tomsky was freed by the Provisional Government after the February Revolution in 1917 and moved to Moscow where he participated in the October Revolution.

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

Mikhail Tomsky was an ally of Nikolai Bukharin and Alexey Rykov, who led the moderate wing of the Communist Party in the 1920s.

Mikhail Tomsky was put in charge of the Soviet chemical industry, a position which he occupied until 1930.

Mikhail Tomsky 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 member.

Mikhail 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.

Rather than face arrest by the NKVD, Mikhail Tomsky committed suicide by gunshot in his dacha in Bolshevo, near Moscow.

Mikhail Tomsky was posthumously found guilty of participation in an anti-Soviet conspiracy during the Trial of the Twenty-One in March 1938.