Ivan Tovstukha


Ivan Pavlovich Tovstukha was a Soviet politician and statesman, candidate member of a Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, member of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union and deputy deputy director of Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute.

Biography

Ivan Tovstukha was born in the family of a clerk, on 10 February, 1889, in Berezna village, Chernigov region. Since 1905, being a student of a secondary school, he was taking part in the revolutionary movement. In 1909 he started working at the Chernigov Social- Democratic organization. In July 1909 Chernigov police searched Tovstukha's room and found about 240 prohibited books, including works of Marx, Engels, August Bebel, Plekhanov, Maxim Gorky. The illegal library belonged to the Social-Democratic groups of pupils of the local seminary. 20 -year-old Ivan was arrested and sentenced to exile in Siberia. His exile started in 1911 in Irkutsk province, where Tovstukha was carrying revolutionary propaganda among locals and exiles, and was beating the influence of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, he was also involved in raising money for the publication of Pravda newspaper.
In January 1912, he fled abroad, and in 1913 he was admitted into Paris section of the RSDLP.
In exile, Tovstukha worked as a digger, assistant fireman, worked in the kitchen, and as a taxi driver. Having joined the truck drivers' union and the French Section of the Workers' International, Tovstukha promoted propaganda among French workers.
After the February Revolution Tovstukha returned to Russia.
Starting from the early 1920s Tovstukha was involved into research - he was studying Lenin's life and works, collecting his literary heritage and preparing the first edition of Lenin's works. Tovstukha prepared detailed notes to the collected works, explored the history of first editions of Lenin's works. He also compiled the list of unfound Lenin's articles, letters, etc. Ivan Tovstukha among others organized the second edition of Lenin's works.
Ivan Tovstukha was the member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.
He died on August 9, 1935 in Moscow. The ossuary was buried in the Kremlin wall.