Mikhail Tomsky, Soviet politician, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (d. 1936)
Mikhail Pavlovich Tomsky (Russian: Михаи́л Па́влович То́мский, born Mikhail Pavlovich Yefremov – sometimes transliterated as Efremov; Михаи́л Па́влович Ефре́мов; 31 October 1880 – 22 August 1936) was a factory worker, trade unionist and Bolshevik leader and Soviet politician. He was the Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions in the 1920s.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.His labour activities radicalized him politically and led him to become a socialist and join the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1904 and eventually join the Bolshevik faction of the party.During the First Moscow Trial, at the onset of the Great Purge, Tomsky was implicated. Mikhail Tomsky would later commit suicide to avoid arrest by the NKVD in August 1936.