Tochisskii, Pavel

Born May 3 (15), 1864, in Ekaterinburg (now Sverdlovsk); died July 18, 1918, in Beloretskii Zavod (now the city of Beloretsk, Bashkir ASSR). Activist in the Social Democratic movement in Russia and a Bolshevik.

The son of a colonel, Tochisskii studied in a Gymnasium, but in 1883 he left the school, broke ties with the dvorianstvo (nobility), and became a worker in the Ekaterinburg railroad workshops. In late 1884 he moved to St. Petersburg, where he studied in a trade school and worked in several enterprises. He also established ties with illegal workers’ organizations there. Tochisskii’s Marxist views were heavily influenced by G. V. Plekhanov’s book Our Differences.

In 1885, Tochisskii founded the Social Democratic organization that soon came to be known as the Association of St. Petersburg Workmen. When the association was disbanded by the government in 1888, Tochisskii was exiled to Zhitomir, but in order to establish ties with revolutionaries in other cities, he visited Moscow, Kolomna, Tambov, Saratov, and Nizhny Novgorod. In October 1888 he was arrested in Nizhny Novgorod and exiled to Ekaterinoslav (now Dnepropetrovsk), where he continued his revolutionary activities. In 1894 he traveled abroad, visiting, among other countries, Bulgaria, where he met D. Blagoev. In 1898, Tochisskii began revolutionary work in Moscow. He was arrested in 1899 and exiled first to Vologda Province and later to Astrakhan and Novorossiisk.

In 1905, Tochisskii began working as a technician and draftsman for the Moscow city council. He was one of the organizers of a trade union for technicians in Moscow, and he participated in the December armed uprising. In 1906 he edited the journal Tekhnik (Technician). During the preparations for the October Revolution and in the revolution itself, he performed party work in the Urals. In Beloretskii Zavod he headed the RSDLP(B) committee, was chairman of the military revolutionary committee, and served as military commissar of the Beloretsk district. Tochisskii was killed during a counterrevolutionary revolt.