[1] In his youth, Tomsky worked at the Smirnov Engineering factory in St. Petersburg, but was eventually dismissed from that job for attempting to organise a trade union.

[2] After the revolution, Tomsky was associated with the right wing faction of the party headed by Nikolai Bukharin and Alexey Rykov, a group seeking orderly planning, a moderate tempo of industrialization, and eschewing rapid and forced collectivization of agriculture.

Mikhail Tomsky was born in Kolpino, Saint Petersburg Governorate in a lower-middle-class family of Russian ethnicity.

Together, they were allied with Joseph Stalin's faction and helped him purge the United Opposition — led by Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev, and Grigory Zinoviev — from the Party during the struggle that followed Lenin's death in 1924.

Tomsky headed the State Publishing House from May 1932 until August 1936, when he was accused of terrorist connections during the First Moscow Trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev.

[2][3] Before committing suicide, he told his wife to tell the investigators that it was Genrikh Yagoda who drove him to the path of opposition, which was later found by Nikolai Yezhov.