TOMSKY, pseudonym of Michael Pavlovich Efremov (188o 1936), Russian politician, born on Oct. 19, 1880, in St. Petersburg (Leningrad), was the son of a workman, and became a factory hand at the age of 12. In 1904 he joined the Bolshevik party and was a member of the Reval council of workers' deputies dur ing the revolution of 1905. Between 1906 and 1917 Tomsky suffered various terms of imprisonment and deportation, and was finally sentenced to five years' hard labour in the Moscow Butyrka prison, followed by deportation for life to Siberia. Released by the revolution of 1917, Tomsky took part in the Bolshevik July rising in St. Petersburg and the October revolution in Moscow. After wards he devoted himself particularly to trade union work, and edited The Metal Workers' Review. He was elected member of the Moscow trade union council, and in 1918 became president of the all-Russian central trade union council, with a short interval when he acted as representative of the Soviets in Turkestan. On
the reorganization of the R.S.F.S.R. into the U.S.S.R. he became a member of the central executive committee of the U.S.S.R.
Tomsky was vice-president of the Soviet delegation to London in 1924, and a member of the delegation to Paris in 1926. He acted as general secretary of the provisional international council of the trade unions from its formation on Aug. r, 1920, to May 1921. On Aug. 22, 1936, he shot himself, rather than face a charge of treasonable complicity with Zinoviev.
His most important writings and addresses are included in the following volumes: Die Neuen Aufgaben der russischen Gewerkschaften (1922) ; Der gegenweirtige Stand der Gewerkschaftsbewegung in Russ land (1923) ; Getting Together: Speeches Delivered in Russia and England: 1924-25 (1925) •