Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

TOMSKII (Efremov), MIKHAIL PAVLOVICH (31 October 1880–22 August 1936). The long-serving leader of Soviet trade unions M. P. Tomskii was born into a working-class family at Kolpino, St. Petersburg guberniia, and trained as a printer. He joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1904 and supported the Bolsheviks in the intra-party struggle. A union organizer and activist at Revel during the 1905 Revolution, he was arrested, imprisoned, and exiled on a number of occasions, until, in 1911, he was sentenced to five years’ hard labor and exiled to Siberia. He returned to Petrograd in 1917, following the February Revolution, to become a member of the Bolsheviks’ Petersburg Committee and editor of the newspaper Metallist (“The Metalworker”).

Following the October Revolution, Tomskii became chairman of the Moscow Council of Trade Unions (from December 1917) and a member of the Council of Workers’ and Peasants’ Defense (1918–1920). On 23 March 1919, he was elected to the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and was subsequently general secretary of the Central Council of Trade Unions and chairman of Profintern, the Red International of Labor Unions (July 1920–May 1921). From 1922, he was a member of the Politbiuro, working with J. V. Stalin and others to undermine L. D. Trotsky in the power struggles that occurred during the illness and subsequent death of V. I. Lenin. A supporter of the New Economic Policy, from April 1929 he was castigated, alongside N. I. Bukharin and A. I. Rykov, as a member of the “Right Opposition” and lost most of his senior party and state posts (although he remained a full member of the party Central Committee until January 1934). In May 1932, he became head of the State Publishing House (Gosizdat).

After being named as a spy during the first of the Moscow show trials, Tomskii committed suicide at Bolshevo (Moscow oblast′) in August 1936. In 1938, during the third of the great show trials, fabricated evidence was presented that named Tomskii as the link between members of the Right Opposition and an oppositional group in the Red Army. He was posthumously rehabilitated on 21 June 1988.

TÕNISSON, ALEKSANDER (17 April 1875–30 June 1941). Major general (Estonian Army, 25 March 1918). A senior nationalist military commander during the Estonian War of Independence, Aleksander Tõnisson was born at Härjanurme, in Estland guberniia, and was a graduate of the Vil′na Military School (1899). He was a veteran of the Russo–Japanese War and the First World War, concluding his service in the latter (from 23 May 1917) as one of the organizers and the commander of the 1st Estonian Regiment, with which he saw action around Riga in the summer of 1917.

When German forces occupied Estonia in early 1918, Tõnisson fled to Finland, returning in the autumn of that year to command the 1st Estonian Division (effectively, the Estonian Army) in the initials stages of the war against Soviet Russia. After the war, he served twice as minister of defense (1920 and 1932–1933), before retiring from the army in 1934 to become mayor of Tartu (1934–1939) and then lord mayor of Tallinn (1939–1940). He was arrested by the occupying Soviet authorities on 19 December 1940 and was executed at Tallinn the following year. In May 2007, the statue of Tõnisson at Johvi was set on fire, allegedly by Russian youths protesting the removal of a Soviet war memorial (the “Bronze Soldier”) in Tallinn.

Tõnisson, Jaan (22 December 1868–1941?). As leader of the right-liberal National Party of Estonia, and twice his country’s prime minister in 1919–1920 (during the Estonian War of Independence), Jaan Tõnisson is chiefly remembered for his part in negotiating the Treaty of Tartu (2 February 1920), through which Estonia was recognized by the Soviet government. A lawyer by training, he was born in the village of Tänassilma, near Viljandi, Estland guberniia, and during the tsarist period was an active opponent of the Russification of his country. From 1893 onward, he edited the most popular Estonian-language newspaper, Postimees (“The Courier”). He was also active in the cooperative movement. During the revolution of 1905, he founded the first legal Estonian political party (the National Progress Party) and was subsequently elected to the 1st State Duma in 1906. Following its dissolution, he was arrested and imprisoned for three months. In 1917, he demanded complete independence for Estonia and was briefly imprisoned by the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution.