It's springtime, which means that Princeton University Press is having its annual 50% off spring sale. From May 4th through June 9th, you can get 50% off nearly every single print, e-book, and audio book from Princeton University Press. Just go to press.prinston.edu to get 50% off incredible books like Disneyland and the Rise of Automation. And beyond belief, how evidence shows what really works.
There are so many fantastic books you can get an incredible deal on. Go to press.prinston.edu and use the code spring50. That's sp-r-i-n-g-50 at press.prinston.edu. This sale only lasts for a month, so go and get some books.
Welcome to the new books network. So welcome to new books in Russian and Eurasian Studies. I'm your host, Sam Long, and today we're talking with Charter's Win about his new book, the moderate Bolshevik Mikhail Tomski from the factory to the Kremlin, 1880 to 1936. So thank you for being here, Charter's, and would you like to tell us a couple of words about yourself?
Yeah. So, I had been for 32 years, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. My first book was Workers' Rights in Paground, Saddam-Bassen, and never banned in late Imperial Russia, 1870 to 1905. And of course, Saddam-Bass has now been focused a lot of interest, and the book has been republished.
My future project is entitled The Circle of Five, Stalin's War Cabinet. So I'm turning my focus from labor history, which I've done so much of my life doing to now focus on World War II. That is partly less than partly because I'm a director of a program focusing on World War II here at the University of Texas. Okay.
Can you tell our listeners a little bit about who Tomski was and what got you interested in his life? Yeah. So, Mikhail Tomski was the long proletarian member of the Politburo during the 1920s. So he was from a working class background, rose up to the party ranks, and became a member of the, of the, of the seven-member Politburo of the 1920s.
Most of our listeners, I'm sure, are familiar with the power struggle that takes place during the 20s. But he was also head of the trade unions, the whole trade union bureaucracy. And I was curious about this man because I was curious about labor history. I was turning to the 1920s, and he appears everywhere, but no one's ever really written about him.
It's just, he's linked with other names. So I was very intrigued by this worker who would, with only three years of elementary school education, could rise into the very top ranks of the party. And so that's what, that would intrigue me. And as I learned more about him, there were just, he was basically involved in every key development during the first 20 years of the, of the Bolshevik party, or the Soviet Union.
So would you like to tell us a little bit about his personality, how he was perceived by his peers and underlings? Yeah, he was, well, he had a very uncharacteristically confident manner. Most of the workers that were in the Bolshevik party were intimidated by intellectuals. He never, he never was.
So he was also able to charm people, including British trade unionists, people who were opposed to him. He was clearly one of the best orders in the party. Kind of a natural public speaker. He spoke at all sorts of settings, but typical of all of these speeches was little insertions on the stenographic reports about laughter in the crowd.
So he was witty, charming, self-confident, and he was perceived as really one of the major figures, or even rumors that he would replace Stalin during the 1920s. So that's a little bit about his personality. So let's start with his early life. Can you tell us a little bit about his upbringing and how his working class and trade unionist background affected his decision to join the party and his views on party matters?
Yeah, so he was born in 1880 in a squalid, suburban industrial area outside of the capital city of St. Petersburg. His mother divorced his father before he was born because of his abuse of behavior. So he was raised by a single mom, and he really truly was kind of an example of the impoverishment that existed for so many Russians during this period.
As a result, he only had three years of formal education. Before the age of 12, he was forced to start working in one of the factories in St. Petersburg. He was, but before too long, he took advantage of the opportunity to become an apprentice, become a printer.
So he was one of the skilled workers, and he clearly was always really interested in learning. He was kind of an auto-di-diak, and so he's far more worldly than his three years of formal education might suggest. The reason he joined the Bolsheviks was he was joining these various skills workers were joining, discontented with conditions inside of Russia, and it probably had more to do with the leader of that initial circle who is a Bolshevik than any kind of doctrinal differences, which probably made very little sense to Tutsky at this point. But it becomes a Marxist, it becomes a Bolshevik at the age of 24, and it was pretty unusual to join that late, partly because he already had children by this age.
So that's a little bit about his background and why he would join the Bolshevik party. So what role did Tutsky play in the 1917 revolution? So he'd been active, already by 1905. In the Bolshevik party, he plays a key role during 1905 in Estonia where he was because he probably blacklisted at St.
Petersburg. He spends nine years in prison and Siberian exile before 1917 arrives, but once the autocracy collapses, he makes his way back to St. Petersburg, and he plays a leading role during the revolution. And what comes to the fore, partly is he's willing to challenge Lenin's ideas, most initially because the Bolshevik in St.
Petersburg, Petrograd at this time, wanted to have their own independent newspaper, Lenin strongly opposed that, but ultimately, Tutsky prevailed. Tutsky is also kind of a voice of caution during 1917. He questioned whether or not Russia was really ready for a Bolshevik revolution, he favored a more coalition socialist government. And partly because of his years of in Siberia and prison before that and working with the kind of toxic chemicals in the chemical industry, he was often suffered from various physical and increasingly psychological problems.
So in the middle of 1917, after the failed July days uprising, he goes back to Moscow. And it's in Moscow where the most violent events during 1917 take place. But he ultimately, although really determined in this case, in 1905 to do what he could to avoid bloodshed, he ultimately fisses out his reservations and helps show the Bolsheviks into power in Moscow. So he plays a prominent role in 1917 that's often been obscured by focus on other key figures.
So you describe Tutsky as a moderate Bolshevik. What do you mean by that? Yeah, that's a very good question. People have raised that question before.
On the face of it seems like an oxymoron, right? Moderate and Bolshevik don't really go together. I mean, I'm the person who wrote a book on Stalin's constitution, so I find those sorts of things very interesting. Yeah, well, I think he was just a modern in the sense that he was far more pragmatic than others opposed to those who had far more radical ideas about both the possibility of spreading the revolution internationally, but also within Russia.
So he was a major defender of NEP, the New Economic Policy, the moderate or the kind of mixed economy of the 1920s. He was kind of the polar opposite of the party to Trotsky, and they would have an ongoing animosity between the two of them. And so, we need to create labor armies and we need to militarize labor and we need to shake up the trade unions. Tutsky was someone who was arguing no.
We need to be more in touch with what ordinary workers want, and we need to put aside some of these harsh measures that Trotsky's talking about. So he was moderate in just taking the more, I don't know, prudent, pragmatic, cautious side, and what's probably been lost in the historiography is the sense that there was a real spectrum of views in the 1920s. And again, whereas Trotsky was on one end of that spectrum, often referred to as the left to stand, Tutsky is on the opposite end of a much more rightist position, and at least that's how it was characterized certainly later when he's denounced as a right deviationist. But yeah, he was moderate in personality and policies, although, and we'll get to this, during the power struggle, he could often sound far from moderate in his willingness to crack down on people who he thought were threatening the policy of NEP, namely Trotsky, and then later Zenobia and coming up as well.
So why don't we transition into that, talk about the role he played in the inner party power struggles in the 20th and his relationships with people like Lenin and Trotsky? Well, it goes actually even during the Civil War, when Trotsky was in this position of trying to balance between these various roles he was playing, the leader of the trade unions, but also one of the top party officials. And while the party officials really wanted, and Tutsky certainly shared the school to have the economy recover, industrialized the economy, Tutsky at the same time wanted to defend workers interests. So this brought him into conflict with Trotsky during the Civil War, when Trotsky was suggesting these labor armies and other things.
During the 1920s, after he set out to Siberia, out to Central Asia, and we can come back to that, he's brought back, he's made one of the seven members of the Politburo. So it's just these seven people who are really in charge of making policy in the country. And one of the challenges of trying to understand Komsky's thinking is why would he support Stalin? But it's important to remember that Stalin was very good at occupying a middle position during the 1920s.
He shared many of his moderate goals and ideals. It was Trotsky, who really, Tutsky saw as the threat to the policies that he shared. And I don't think many people have fully appreciated just how that animosity towards Trotsky, not just by Stalin, which has been much played up. But by persons such as Tutsky would play a role in why he would side with Stalin along with Bukhan and Rikov.
And they had the majority within the Politburo, as everyone knows, ultimately Trotsky has pushed the side. Going back to Lenin, of course, Lenin would be incapacitated in 1922 as a result of the first of his strokes. But Lenin was opposed to putting Tutsky on the Politburo, but he was outvoted. And just the indication of the kind of respect that Tutsky enjoyed, that even over Lenin's objections, he becomes a member of the Politburo.
But intertwined with this inner struggle over power within the Politburo was also Tutsky's continued role as head of the trade unions, and trying to, again, kind of, the agents kind of balancing act between the goals of the party and the goals of the trade unions. And what exactly were the goals of the trade unions and how were they different than that of the party? Well, the goals of the trade unions were to protect workers' interests to allow... What do you mean by that?
Because I'm sure the party would say that they also protected workers' interests. Can you be a little more specific? Yeah, sure. Well, basically, higher wages is what they wanted.
And the party was saying, no, which were efficiencies we pushed on raising productivity, and as a result, they would often be in conflict. Tutsky, at the same time, agreed with the party that there should not be strikes that would undermine the trade, excuse me, these goals of raising production in the country. It's important to appreciate that at the end of the Civil War, I mean, the Russian industrial economy had ultimately, just virtually destroyed, it was 15% of productivity levels on the eve of World War I in 1913, and it was only slower during the 1920s, that industrial production got back to where it was back in 1913. So the goals of the trade unions were to help with improving production, but also to improve conditions for workers, which were also just completely horrible by the end of the Civil War.
So wages with solely increased during the 1920s. One of the problems for the trade unions that they really had trouble grappling with was the high level of unemployment rate in the 1920s. But that was not because the number of workers weren't continually increasing, but it was because as the industrial economy begins to recover, all these peasants from rural Russia began flooding into these cities, couldn't find jobs, and trade unions were not really in a position to do much too alleviate that. But that would be a kind of constant criticism of the trade unions that they hadn't done more for, unemployed young workers, women, and others who were struggling to find jobs in the 1920s.
Okay, and so it's this conflict between the goals of the trade unions, which tend to be a little bit more practical and centered on the improving daily conditions of workers' lives, as opposed to the party who's thinking more nationally or globally that causes a conflict. Yeah, exactly. And so, so yeah, the trade unions would try to improve conditions for workers and these individual factories. Also, another big factor during all of this was that the trade unions wanted to have a role in the administration of factories.
I mean, one of the goals before the revolution was workers' control. That's what socialism meant. Workers would be in control of industry. But with these various problems and with the lack of administrative skills by many of the workers in these factories, increasingly factories were run by managers who were not workers, who were not, and that would be a source of conflict, especially when the so-called bourgeois specialists were brought in at a higher pay, but actually knew how to run these factories.
In many cases, been working for these managerial positions in these factories before the revolution. So that was another source of real conflict. And Tomsky, and this would be not to his credit, would really support the kind of crackdown on these bourgeois specialists at the end of the 1920s. But what they were still workers had influence, the trade unions had influenced the negotiations, these collective agreements in which managers agreed to increase wages.
Because the trade unions, managers could not fire trade unions without, excuse me, cannot fire workers, that the trade unions approval. They were intimately involved in all sorts of aspects of this recovering industrial economy. And as I said before, by the time you get to 1928, workers' wages have basically gone back to where they were in 1913. Not a particularly impressive accomplishment, perhaps, given that things weren't so wonderful in 1913, but it was a dramatic improvement from what had been just a few years before.
So you also mentioned that Tomsky plays a huge role in foreign policy in the 1920s through the trade unions. Can you talk a little bit about that? Why it was important? Yeah, so one of the rationalizations for the Bolsheviks seizing power in this country that didn't meet any of the kind of Marxist preconditions of advanced industrial countries, still overwhelmingly peasant, was that it would spark revolutions in other countries.
And they really expected that the Bolshevik revolution would lead to revolutions in Germany and France, et cetera. So we can, obviously, Tomsky, before others, that really wasn't going to happen anytime soon. And he begins to work towards creating, instead of revolutions in other countries, a kind of international trade union movement that would bring together the trade unions that Tomsky is leading in the Soviet Union with trade unions in other countries. And where he has really dramatic success, at least initially, is in Great Britain.
So one of the few foreign policy achievements of the 1920s with the Soviet Union was the creation of what came down as the Anglo-Russian Committee. And this was Tomsky reaching out to labor party leaders in Great Britain to create a joint international organization with the goal of having that spread to other countries, namely Germany and France, but other countries as well. Could you explain why that was possible? Because when you think of modern Britain, they seem like unlikely bedfellows for the Soviet Union.
What made the British working class receptive? Yeah, it's a good question, especially since the labor leaders were very hostile to the Communists and the Communists relatively small, Communist Party inside of Great Britain. I think a lot of it goes back to Tomsky's ability to charm people. So he's brought in as part of this foreign delegation that was working towards having Great Britain finally recognized the Soviet Union as a legitimate government of Great Britain of Russia.
He is brought to this dinner and he gives this talk and people are just, these labor leaders are all cheering. They're, you know, brought me back in touch with my goals when I first joined the labor party. And he also attends a numerous conferences where I also give speeches at one point, even thrown up in the air at the end of it. But people describe in very vivid detail just how compelling his presentations were.
He also brings many of these labor leaders to the Soviet Union, to attend Soviet trade union congresses. So a lot of it is Tomsky's ability to reach common ground with these labor leaders. The problem for Tomsky is also having to fight off those within Moscow who don't like this reaching out to these so-called reformists, not radicals in Great Britain. And that's part of the story is him trying to, again, kind of walk this middle line, of balancing act between making it appeals to Great Britain, to British labor leaders, while also having to deal with criticisms from many of the leaders of the Bolshevik party.
But his initial success is such that everyone seems to agree that Tomsky has carried off this impressive feat and that it would be possible to really perhaps create a sort of international trade union with social democrats and without getting into the weeds. There was also inside of Moscow this counter-organization on his profit turn, which was to create a communist trade union international. This was willing to work with social democrats. Tomsky's efforts all come crashing down, though, when there's a 1926 general strike in Great Britain, in which coal miners kind of pushed the labor leaders into calling this general strike.
Their heart's not really into it. They're outmaneuvered by the conservative government, which had been anticipating how they would respond to some sort of strike like this. And after a little more than a week, they call off the strike. And for Tomsky, I've put such faith in these, had such success with these labor leaders for them to have betrayed the coal miners and other workers in Great Britain, was really used by the more radical members of the party, Trotsky in particular, but it's an OVF in coming up when they would later join up with Tomsky to kind of undermine Tomsky.
But it was initially a success, but it ultimately ends in failure. When you say conservative British government, you mean the Lloyd George government, right? No, it's Stanley Baldwin. I think it was just elected.
So the labor party was only in power for like nine months before. And that goes back to something known as the Znovia letter. But part of also why he was successful with these British trade unionists was when the labor party is elected. It was against the rules for someone to be in the labor party, but also a trade union leader.
So many of the trade union leaders who joined- That makes no sense. Many of the trade union leaders would leave the trade unions positions like the president of the trade unions Congress to become a leading figure in the labor party. That let more radical workers, because it was more conservative members of the trade union movement who would join the McDonald's government. And when that government collapses, many of those people come back into the trade unions.
It's they call off the strike in 1926. And it's not the people with whom Tom Siegel had such an impressive early success, whining and dining them in Moscow, taking them out to his Dutch grilling, Shash League, Shishkabab for them. He really developed a friendship with many of them too, who, even though things got pretty bitter after the general strike when Tom Siegel is under pressure to denounce them, looking towards the end of Tom Siegel's life when many of these trade union leaders wanted to reestablish contact with him. So the government's a Stalinist government tried to prevent it, but they ultimately, one of them succeeded.
So it was partly his ability to join into close collaboration and even friendship with many of these leaders that is again a striking example of his charm and self-confidence and pragmatic inclinations. More orthodox, Marxist ideologues within the party were opposed to this effort to establish a close relationship with the British trade unionist, but Tom Siegel had had without it. They initially all celebrated his successes, but then jumped at criticizing him when it all comes crashing down after the general strike in 1926. So, Tom Siegel did not speak much English, but he in prison had tried to learn some English, so he was able to carry on a simple conversation.
But in these speeches, yeah, there was certainly a translator who was translating them. Well, I guess the translator did a good job if people found them charismatic because a bad translator can suck all the fun out of a good speech. I think they're more credit, but in these other venues, he provoked laughter. He had all these little sayings that people found intriguing.
One of the first times he spoke, Walter Sottreen, who was the head of the trade unionist at this point, says he was on his tiptoes in anticipation, and then Tom Siegel's metallic voice filled the room, which he got a little more surprising to many because he was very short. I mean, he was just five foot three. All the Bolsheviks are minuscule, though. That's true.
The car was less than five feet tall, I think, and it's almost relatively tall at five foot six. Funny job was an absolute midget, so. But to the British, they seemed malnourished and stunted growth. Well, it's because they were.
So speaking of Tom Siegel's other failures, you mentioned that Lenin had him banished to Central Asia. Why did that happen and how did that affect him? So in 1920, there was what we came down as the trade union debate or the bait over the workers opposition who were upset that workers did not have more control. And anyway, Tom Siegel is initially very successful in negotiating that.
Even at one of these trade union congresses, they vote almost unanimously against Lenin, who's adopted Trotsky's proposal about the need for labor armies and one man management. This ultimately leads to Tom Siegel having to compromise, but he plays a leading role in resolving this trade union debate that had become really a topic that everyone in the country was talking about during 1920. It culminates as a 10th party congress in which workers opposition is defeated soundly and Tom Siegel's compromise proposal carries the day. But just a month after that, at the fourth trade union congress later in 1921, Tom Siegel kind of regrets having made some of these compromises or is under a lot of pressure from the more radical trade union is performing at Alexander Schloppnikov with the workers opposition.
And he is roundly criticized by the party leaders for allowing this trade union debate to continue. Lenin really wanted it over. I mean, he was very critical of Trotsky for making it public, but once it became public, it had to be resolved. It's also in the context of the cross-statt revolt, the strikes among workers.
And Tomsky ultimately is brought before the Paul Bureau and figures in the OGPU, the secret police that check out and is criticized. Lenin says, was this a mistake or crime? He can't decide. But in any case, it's one of the first, it is the first time that the so-called ban on factions was put into place.
Lenin wants Tomsky to be kicked out of the party. A party leadership doesn't go along with that, but he is sent off to Central Asia as a party mission. In charge of the Turkestan Commission that was to oversee nationality issues in this area where even though the Civil War is mostly over, there was still a lot of guerrilla warfare by Muslims opposed to the Bolshevik taking over the region. And that's how he ends up there.
And it really seemed at this point that his political career was over, at the high and high settlements of the party, but remarkably, and we could talk a little bit about what happened while he was there, but remarkably within just four months he's brought back to Moscow and even more remarkably. Again, over Lenin's objections, he's made a member of the seven-member, Paul up here, the highest policy-making organ in the country. So it's amazing that he would be able to recover so quickly from what seemed like the end of his political career. But he impresses people with how he does things in Central Asia.
He comes into serious conflict with one of the real fanatics in the party who is carrying out a policy of de-quelockization here in 1921, not the more familiar one of the end of 1929 and 1930, which he's rounding up these Russian settlers who had moved to Central Asia some in some cases decades earlier, and is basically rounding them up, giving them no time to really prepare, sending them out of these villages, taking them to railway stations, and these people had no idea where they were being sent. Tom's, Tom's, he's appalled at this treatment. And, and here again, he would be this kind of moderate voice. You know, yes, we need to maybe do things about some of these settlers, but to just brutally round them up in this attempt to appeal to the local populations was he found appalling, and even more appalling was kind of the treatment of these of these settlers.
Would you call it de-quelockization or would you call it de-quelonialization? Well, it's kind of, yeah, good point. It's basically one hand in hand, and that was partly why this guy, Saphraff, was advocating these policies. But these settlers were basically coolocks and that there were more prosperous farmers than the generally nomadic.
Well, coolock is a very squidgy term to begin with. Yeah, certainly is. But that's the term that would be used against them. Yeah, I mean, perhaps Tomsky was too solicitous of them.
This, they had been encouraged back under the Zars to move to Central Asia as part of his attempt to have a Russian population in the region. He slightly racist colonial policy. Yeah, and yes, definitely. And Tomsky himself had many of these kind of prejudices against the local population.
But so, so yes, it was, that was the justification, partly was certainly de-quelinalization, an attempt to appeal to the local populations. But also by this time, Lenin and Trotsky hoped that the revolution, which wasn't spread into Western Europe, could spread to Asia and wanted to show Asians that they were serious about de-quelinalization, supporting, you know, rights of self-determination by the local populations. And so, yeah, Tomsky tries to soften the party's policy towards the native population as well. He reopens the mosques, reopens the bazaars.
But he is strongly opposed to this policy of just rounding these people off. It's also, of course, in the context of 1921 when there's famine across Russia. Where are you going to send these people? But yes, he could, as I just suggested in my Santa book, could be criticized for being overly concerned about their treatment, given that they were these, basically these pioneers who came in and took the local populations land.
And not unlike, we're familiar with the United States, so just moving and pushing out the indigenous population and taking their land. But, but that happened well before Tomsky arrives. And the question is, you know, how to deal with this, and he is opposed to just rounding them up and sending them off also partly because there's also a shortage of food inside of Central Asia. And these were farmers who were, you know, providing much much of the scan amount of food that there was, much of Central Asia, not as Turkestan by the Zars government, also by the Soviets, had been converted to cotton farming.
So they needed to import grain from Central Europe, excuse me, Central Russia, as well as the grain that these sellers were providing. But with the railroads cut off during the Civil War, there's a horrible famine, not just in the Volde region that our listeners might be familiar with, but also in Central Asia where a large percentage of population would starve to dust. So I'm assuming that this definitely put him in conflict when policies under the five year plan of industrialization and collectivization and equalization came into play. Yes.
Yes. So where Tomsky is most famous, or people have perhaps heard his name was as part of the so called right opposition to Stalin's policies, when Stalin suddenly in 1928 kind of abandoned the moderate policies that he had supported and advocated during the 1920s and begins talking about forced collectivization. And Tomsky joins with this Bukharan and Rikov, three members of the Polypriot, which I just pointed expanded to nine members to try to stop Stalin's policy of decolockization and forced collectivization. And they predicted the outcome of that would be disastrous.
We've been talking about Stalin in the harshest terms. One of the amazing things, this is not a novel on my part, but that people would support Stalin until the day he basically turns against them. And then suddenly the blinders come off and Tomsky Bukharan with Tomsky's support basically describes Stalin as the next Genghis Khan. He's going to drown the revolution in blood.
Yet just six months before they had been working arm in arm with Stalin against against the so called United Opposition. So it is really his opposition to the ending of NEP, to the introduction of these kind of forced collectivization, but also breakneck industrial. The five year plans. The five year plans, forced collectivization and breakneck industrialization.
And he was also concerned that this would also dramatically undercut the power of the trade unions, which it would. It would also lead to a dramatic reduction in workers wages, which it did. But he also predicted that the peasants would oppose forced collectivization, which they certainly did. And then of course it would ultimately lead to the horrible famine 1932-33.
The bias point, he's been pushed out of power. So he basically loses this struggle against Stalin. And it was at the eighth trading in Congress, December 1928. This was basically the opposition to Stalin's kind of last organizational base.
But ultimately he's not able to stop the Stalinist from pushing him aside. And he would remain inside the Politburo for a short time afterwards, continue to attend meetings, but he had basically been a blast off political power. So how does he spend his time once he's no longer in power? Does he hang out at his dad, just like Gruszjef?
Well, he initially basically has a nervous breakdown and he sent off to Germany, Italy for some sort of treatment, so I'm not sure exactly what was sent to him. Who sent him? The party. Wow.
So they threw him out of power, but they still sent him on a European spot trip? Yeah. And you would think maybe after what he just experienced, he would not return on one of these trips he's even able to bring his wife, but they return. But Karn has also sent out of the country to one of these trips to collect Marxist literature in Germany, but he returns.
But after he recovers and he occupies a few different positions, he's basically head of the chemical industry for a little while. He becomes head of the state publishing operation in Russia. Well, it's Agiz. But it's basically the continuation of that.
It's got some 36,000 employees. It oversees the publication of everything in Russia during this period. So here's Topsky. Three years of formal education.
Yet he's in charge of the publishing industry in Russia. That's really not that weird. I mean, I look at the right, Tom Chairman and stuff all the time. So many of these people have zero publications for any of the jobs they have.
Sometimes it's too few education. Sometimes it's too much. I got one or it's a professor of history who's in charge suddenly a flax production. I'm thinking, well, crap, I know nothing about flax.
And then other times, yet, someone who did like two years of some sort of religious school and they're supposed to be managing these huge enterprises. Yeah, I'll true. I mean, certainly though, Topsky by this point was a very experienced administrator and the publishing industry was in pretty dire straits, sort of a shortage of paper, all sorts of problems. And he was pretty good at refurbishing many of these outdated printing presses or replacing them.
Getting resources even meets with Stalin at one point, pleading for more resources for the publishing industry. But also though, this is the time when the new policy of social realism has come into force. So Topsky's not really shaping publishing policy so much as administering it. But at one point, they need to get rid of all the textbooks in Russia since things have changed under Stalin and Topsky is able to kind of carry out the stupendous publishing expansion of textbooks and other resources.
We also would try to help some people who are in dire straits by helping them get published often anonymously. But so there were a few moments of profiles encouraged, but basically during this time, he's administering the trade union issues. He continues to be attacked by the Stalinists. He's brought before basically purge commissions, which also proved to be a great resource because he's basically at these purge commissions.
Tell the story of his life and he would. When you're talking purge commissions, you're talking party purge commissions for the renewal party documents, right? Yeah, that was the case for many of them. But each enterprise would set up these commissions.
And Topsky is being criticized at the highest levels at the party congresses. And so these local purge commissions, which was the verify documents, but also to keep people out of the party, in most cases, not because of their political views. They were drunk. Exactly.
But they used this opportunity, which is all received by Kaganovich to attack Topsky. What was striking also in his purge commission in addition to sharing his life experiences was that even though he would, these dark clouds were hanging over him, even though he was in political disgrace, the people he was supervising at Ogees, publishing a conglomerate, we've come to his defense and talk about what a great improvements he'd made in the publishing industry. And sadly, these acts of courage would all mean that not only the former, his former associates in the trade unions, but his associates in the publishing industry would all be rounded up during the great purges because of their association. So he was accused of familyness?
What? Familyness, it's a means to him? Yeah. Well, he was accused of double dealing, he was accused of being an enemy of the people.
It was only after Topsky commit suicide that these people would all be rounded up. And so, yeah, familyness if you want, but just anyone who basically had close associations with this, this enemy of the people, and of course, is familiar with other aspects of the great purges. Well, yeah, I mean, creating family circles and bringing around people with you and sort of creating a protective family circle is something really common in that regional party office. Right.
Yeah. And it's also clear that he continued to be with other oppositionists. So, you know, he was accused of, you know, publicly supporting the party policies, but privately continuing to hold these oppositionist views. We meet with people who have been opposed to earlier, and it's an obvious and common effect.
Comiaff becomes employed in the publishing industry as well. So it's almost an entrapment when Topsky was a common F over publishing industry issues and they're accused of collaborating against the party. Well, I mean, that's the thing that was eventually all the leaders have worked together at some point. And Comiaff later would say, yeah, we talked about everything and anything when we get together.
So does he say that before or after the NKVD beats the absolute crap out of him? Well, yeah. Before, you know, when they're being terrorized. But yeah, certainly Comiaff and Sonovia were the targets of the first show trial in Moscow in the summer of 1936 when they would accuse Topsky.
And he's Topsky of being a fellow terrorist and put on the same power as Fascist. And it's that which would lead Topsky to decide that he was not going to go through this process. He was not going to be interrogated. He was not going to have the crap beat out of him to use your phrase.
But he was going to commit suicide instead. Well, I say that because I'm currently going through repression documents in Kirav. And it's very clear that the NKVD here beat people terribly into things like the CIA where they put you in stress postures, where they put you in cold rooms, sleep deprivation, standing for action. And then they put you in the situation, standing for hours on and several people end up in psychiatric wards after this.
So, I mean, they did absolutely torture these people. Yeah, but correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression is that that's not in 1936. That's more in 1937. That's 1937, but I would imagine that any interrogation documents that Kevin and Sonovia gave were probably at least slightly coerced.
Yeah, I think there's no question about it. I think sleep deprivation was a favorite method and very effective. You don't need to necessarily torture people. Anybody who's lived through exam week knows it's quite effective.
Right, so, yeah, actually there's a documentary about these people who wanted to get a truck and if you could hold your hand on the car, the longest you would get the truck. And it was, it's just Texas documentary that's kind of fascinating about just how after a couple of days people, as much as they might want, there's a pickup truck, just cannot keep their hand on the truck and start having hallucinations and various other things. So, yeah, the so-called conveyor belt of just sleep deprivation, which is, yeah, so CIA certainly uses like what, Sonoma Bay or use it, or Sonoma Bay. I think it uses that.
Yeah, okay. It can be very, very effective. But yes, but later they would use harsher methods. But I mean, one of the mysteries has always been, you know, why would people confess to crimes they clearly had not committed?
And Tom's key to not want to go through this process, which he already kind of foresaw having to provide this last service to the party. So he, he decides to, once he's announced at this first show trial, kind of the testimony that Sonovia and others give at the end of the three days of hearings. He picks up a newspaper that his chauffeurs, his drop by, comes to pick him up to pick him to another purge hearing. He goes also going through his gun purge hearings at the same time as the show trials going on.
He decides, according to his son to just run along and he takes a gun, he was a big hunter, as all these party leaders were, but none preps as much as Tom's key. And he basically blows his brains out. He hoped it seems, in his suicide note, would suggest that he was hoping to save his family, but they would, his two older sons would be later arrested and executed, his wife and his youngest son would be sent off to the Gulag. And so that failed, and he also, as I mentioned, all of these people had been associated with him, would also be swept up in the purges that follow his suicide.
So, Stalin, the party leadership, is infuriated that he's committed suicide, deprived him of being able to force him through one of these show trials. And, but... I'm sure that one doesn't care because he's dead, but... But it's curious that, you know, not a word of sympathy from anybody who had been kind of his friends, that he'd been driven to this point and committed suicide.
So, rather than ending on, he committed suicide, why don't we summarize the things that are important about Tom's key, other than he and Kirk Cobain exited the world the same way, that you would like people to remember about him? Well, just that he played a 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. So, just that he'd been able to rise from an impoverished working-class background, as we talked about earlier, and years of bizarre, as prison and Siberian exile, to become both a polypial member and the head of the trade unions. Whereas we also talked about, he helped shape Soviet domestic and foreign policy along generally moderate lines throughout the 1920s.
And it was his opposition to Stalin, and his attempt to block Stalin's catastrophic adoption of forced collectivization that would tragically make Tom's key a prime target during the great purges. So, I think that's how I would summarize the significance of this 452 page book, which goes into these various aspects of his life. If your listeners are curious about getting a copy of the book, I'm not sure what real marketing strategy is, but they put out the hardback in very expensive editions and the book as well. But they also, a year after the publication was in March, they will come out through Haymarket Press with a paperback that's very moderately priced.
So, get your library to order a copy or wait for a year, because right now the book's $190. Or check out the podcast. So, thank you very much for being here with us, and I will let you go now. Thank you.