The moderate Bolshevik : : Mikhail Tomsky from the factory to the Kremlin, 1880-1936 / / by Charters Wynn.

• Superior document: Historical materialism book series ; Volume 253
• VerfasserIn: Wynn, Charters, 1953-
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : Brill,, [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: Historical materialism book series ; Volume 253.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (467 pages)
• Notes: This first English-language biography of Mikhail Tomsky illuminates how the sole worker in the top echelon of the Bolshevik Party, and the leader of the huge trade-union bureaucracy, helped shape Soviet domestic and foreign policy along generally moderate lines throughout the 1920s.

This first English-language biography of Mikhail Tomsky reveals his central role in all the key developments in early Soviet history, including the stormy debates over the role of unions in the self-proclaimed workers’ state. Charters Wynn’s compelling account illuminates how the charismatic Tomsky rose from an impoverished working-class background and years of tsarist prison and Siberian exile to become both a Politburo member and the head of the trade unions, where he helped shape Soviet domestic and foreign policy along generally moderate lines throughout the 1920s. His failed attempt to block Stalin’s catastrophic adoption of forced collectivization would tragically make Tomsky a prime target in the Great Purges.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements -- List of Illustrations -- Introduction -- 1 Note on Transliteration -- 1 The Making of a Moderate Working-Class Bolshevik Leader -- 2 Balancing Act: Tomsky during War Communism and the Trade-Union Debate -- 3 Detour East: From Disgraced Exile in Tashkent to Redemption inside the Kremlin -- 4 Getting Together Then Falling Apart: Tomsky and British Trade Unionists -- 5 Tomsky during NEP : Trade Unions and the Intra-Party Struggle -- 6 NEP ’s Last Stand: The Eighth Trade-Union Congress -- 7 Tomsky Outcast: Tormenting a ‘Right Deviationist’ -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index.