Mikhail Tomsky

Early life (1880–1903)

Tomsky was born in Kolpino, Saint Petersburg Governorate, to a poor working class family of Russian ethnicity. His father was a metal worker and his mother worked as a seamstress. As such Tomsky was to become one of the relatively few "hereditary proletarians" (to use the term favored by Soviet historians) of the period. His father was an abusive alcoholic and Tomsky's mother left him shortly before Mikhail's birth, choosing to raise Mikhail and his two siblings as a single mother instead.

Tomsky's formal education was extremely paltry. He managed to learn to read at age 5 at a private boarding school which he was allowed to attend for a year due to his aunt working as a servant there. At age 9 he was enrolled in a publicly-funded elementary school, which he attended for three years, finishing the program at the top of his class. Although his scores were sufficient for entrance into secondary school, the 50 ruble tuition which was required proved beyond the impoverished family's means, and Tomsky's classroom education terminated at that point.

Although technically illegal, Tomsky joined the ranks of Russian factory workers at the age of 12, working as an apprentice box maker for a daily wage of just 5 kopecks. He was fired by the box factory after injuring a finger in a shop accident and began several years of moving from job to job in St. Petersburg, finding employment in a tobacco factory, a metal shop, and an engineering factory.

In 1894, at the age of just 14, Tomsky participated in his first strike as an employee of the Rouss–Smirnov engineering works. The strike proved a failure, resulting in Tomsky losing his job and forced to endure months of unemployment.

Tomsky soon entered the field of chromolithography (color printing) as an apprentice, eventually becoming a master lithographer in 1901 at the age of 21. Tomsky worked thereafter at a series of printing factories in St. Petersburg, gaining sufficient skill and renown that his portrait was used on a 1903 poster created to advertise the lithographic profession. He became a comparatively well-compensated print-maker, able to afford to rent a small apartment on the outskirts of the capital city on his own and to date and eventually marry a young woman from a prosperous family.

Further arrest and exile (1908–1917)

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

In 1918 he attended the Fourth All Russian Conference of Trade Unions (12–17 March), where he moved a resolution concerning the Relations between the Trade Unions and the Commissariat 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 between Labour and Capital, whereas the new Commissariat was the champion of the economic policy of the working class.