Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (; – 12 June 1937), nicknamed the Red Napoleon, was a Soviet general who was prominent between 1918 and 1937 as a military officer and theoretician. He was later executed during the Moscow trials of 1936–1938.
He served as an officer in World War I of 1914–1917 and in the Russian Civil War of 1917–1923, leading the defense of the Moscow district (1918), commanding forces on the Eastern Front (1918), commanding the Fifth Army in the recapture of Siberia from Alexander Kolchak, and heading Cossack forces against Anton Denikin (1920). From 1920 to 1921 he commanded the Soviet Western Front in the Polish–Soviet War. Soviet forces under his command successfully repelled the Polish forces from Western Ukraine, driving them back into Poland, but the Red Army suffered defeat outside of Warsaw, and the war ended in a Soviet defeat. Tukhachevsky blamed Joseph Stalin for his defeat at the Battle of Warsaw.
He later served as Chief of Staff of the Red Army from 1925 to 1928, as assistant in the People's Commissariat of Defense Legend states that his family descended from a Flemish count who ended up stranded in the East during the Crusades and took a Turkish wife before settling in Russia. His great-grandfather Alexander Tukhachevsky (1793–1831) served as a colonel in the Imperial Russian Army. He was of Russian ethnicity. After attending the Cadet Corps in 1912, he moved on to the , where he graduated in 1914.
World War I
At the outset of the First World War, he joined the Semyenovsky Guards Regiment (July 1914) as a second lieutenant, declaring:
<blockquote>I am convinced that all that is needed in order to achieve what I want is bravery and self-confidence. I certainly have enough self-confidence.... I told myself that I shall either be a general at thirty, or that I shall not be alive by then.</blockquote>
Taken prisoner by the Imperial German Army in February 1915, Tukhachevsky escaped four times from prisoner-of-war camps and was finally held as an incorrigible escapee in Ingolstadt fortress in Bavaria.
Captivity in Ingolstadt
Fluent in French, there he met journalist Remy Roure and shared a cell with Captain Charles de Gaulle. Tukhachevsky played his violin, assailed nihilist beliefs and spoke against Christians and Jews, whom he called dogs who "spread their fleas throughout the world". Later in various works he made Russians familiar with De Gaulle's military thinking. Roure, under the pseudonym of Pierre Fervacque, wrote about his encounter with Tukhachevsky. He reported that Tukhachevsky highly praised Napoleon, and also in a certain conversation, Tukhachevsky said he hated Jews for bringing Christianity and the "morality of capital" to Russia. Roure then asked him if he was a socialist, and he replied:
According to Roure, Tukhachevsky said that he would follow Lenin only if he "de-europeanised and threw Russia into barbarism", but feared Lenin would not do that. After ranting about how he could use Marxism as a justification to secure the territorial aims of the tsars and cement Russia's position as a world power, he laughed and said he was only joking. Roure said the laugh had an ironic and despairing tone.
Tukhachevsky's apparent neopaganism was also corroborated by another prisoner at Ingolstadt, , who recalled that he once saw a "scarecrow" in the corner of Tukhachevsky's cell, and upon asking him as to what it was, Tukhachevsky responded (to what Tsurikov interpreted as heavy sarcasm), that it was an effigy of Yarilo (the Slavic god of vegetation, fertility and springtime), which he had created during Shrovetide.
Tukhachevsky never denied and later even confirmed those stories about his imprisonment in Germany, but always said that he was politically immature in 1917 and greatly regretted his early views. In France 1936, when confronted with what Roure wrote about him, he said that he had read his book and stated the following:<blockquote>I was still very young... a novice at politics, and all I knew about revolutions was the last phase of the citizens' revolution in France: the Bonapartism whose military triumphs filled me with boundless admiration. (...) I never think of my views at Ingolstadt without regretting them, since they could cause doubts about my devotion to the Soviet motherland. I'm taking advantage of our reunion to tell you my true feelings.
Tukhachevsky also helped defeat General Anton Denikin in the Crimea in 1920, conducting the final operations. In February 1920, he launched an offensive into the Kuban and used cavalry to disrupt the enemy's rear. In the retreat that followed, Denikin's force disintegrated, and Novorossiysk was evacuated hastily.
In the final stage of the Civil War, Tukhachevsky commanded the 7th Army during the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion in March 1921. He also commanded the assault against the Tambov Republic between 1921 and 1922.
Polish–Soviet War
thumb|left|Polish soldiers displaying captured Soviet battle flags after the [[Battle of Warsaw (1920)|Battle of Warsaw in 1920|242x242px]]
Tukhachevsky commanded the Soviet invasion of Poland during the Polish–Soviet War in 1920. In the lead-up to hostilities, he concentrated his troops near Vitebsk, which he theatrically dubbed, "The Gates of Smolensk". When he issued his troops orders to cross the border, Tukhachevsky said, "The fate of world revolution is being decided in the west: the way leads over the corpse of Poland to a universal conflagration.... On to Wilno, Minsk, and Warsaw – forward!"
According to Richard M. Watt, "The boldness of Tukhachevsky's drive westward was the key to his success. The Soviet High Command dispatched 60,000 men as reinforcements, but Tukhachevsky never stopped to let them catch up. His onrushing armies were leaving behind greater numbers of stragglers every day, but Tukhachevsky ignored these losses. His supply services were in chaos and his rear scarcely existed as an organized entity, but Tukhachevsky was unconcerned; his men would live off the land. On the day his troops captured Minsk, a new cry arose – 'Give us Warsaw!' Tukhachevsky was determined to give them what they wanted. All things considered, Tukhachevsky's performance was a virtuoso display of energy, determination, and, indeed, rashness."
In the summer of 1920, Tukhachevsky successfully pushed back the joint Polish-Ukrainian army of Piłsudski and Petliura that had conquered Kyiv in May. However, his armies were defeated by Piłsudski in the Battle of Warsaw shortly after. It was during the Polish war that Tukhachevsky first came into conflict with Joseph Stalin. Both blamed each other for the Soviet failure to capture Warsaw. Tukhachevsky later lamented:
His book about the war was translated into Polish and published, together with a book by Piłsudski.
Reform of the Red Army
thumb|right|Tukhachevsky with the other first four [[Marshal of the Soviet Union|Marshals of the Soviet Union in November 1935. (l–r): Tukhachevsky, Semyon Budyonny, Kliment Voroshilov, Vasily Blyukher, and Aleksandr Yegorov. Only Budyonny and Voroshilov survived the Great Purge.]]
Tukhachevsky fervently criticised the Red Army's performance during the 1926 Summer manoeuvres. He criticised the officers' inability to determine what course of action to take and communicate that with their troops especially harshly.
Tukhachevsky reached the position of First Deputy Commissar for defence to Defence Commisar Kliment Voroshilov. Upon Stalin's ascension to the party leadership in 1929, he began receiving denunciations from senior officers who disapproved of Tukhachevsky's tactical theories. In 1930, the Joint State Political Directorate forced two officers to testify that Tukhachevsky was plotting to overthrow the Politburo via a coup d'état.
According to Montefiore:
Tukhachevsky later wrote several books on modern warfare, In 1931, after Stalin had accepted the need for an industrialized military, Tukhachevsky was given a leading role in reforming the army. and subsequently played music together at Tukhachevsky's home (Tukhachevsky played the violin). In 1936, Shostakovich's music was under attack after Pravda denounced his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. However, Tukhachevsky intervened with Stalin on his friend's behalf. After Tukhachevsky's arrest, pressure was put on Shostakovich to denounce him, but Shostakovich was saved from doing so by the fact that the investigator was himself arrested.
Theory of deep operation
thumb|upright|Tukhachevsky in 1936
Tukhachevsky is often credited with the theory of deep operation in which combined arms formations strike deep behind enemy lines to destroy the enemy's rear and logistics, but his exact role is unclear and disputed because of shortage of firsthand sources, and his published works containing only limited amounts of theory on the subject. The theories were opposed by some in the military establishment but were largely adopted by the Red Army in the mid-1930s. They were expressed as a concept in the Red Army's Field Regulations of 1929 and more fully developed in the 1935 Instructions on Deep Battle. The concept was finally codified into the army in 1936 in the Provisional Field Regulations of 1936. An early example of potential effectiveness of deep operations can be found in the Soviet victory over Japan at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in which a Soviet Corps under the command of Zhukov defeated a substantial Japanese force in August and September 1939 in Nomonhan.
It is often stated that the widespread purges of the Red Army officer corps in 1937 to 1939 made "deep operation" briefly fall from favor. However, it was certainly a major part of Soviet doctrine after its efficacy was demonstrated by the Battle of Khalkhin Gol and the success of similar German operations in Poland and France. The doctrine was used with great success during World War II on the Eastern Front in such victories as the Battle of Stalingrad and Operation Bagration.
Fall and death
thumb|Tukhachevsky at the Warsaw Railway Station, en route to London, 1936
On November 20, 1935, Tukhachevsky was made a Marshal of the Soviet Union when he was 42. In January 1936, Tukhachevsky visited the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
Just before his arrest, Tukhachevsky was relieved of duty as assistant to Marshal Voroshilov and was appointed military commander of the Volga Military District. Shortly after departing to take up his new command, he was secretly arrested on May 22, 1937, and brought back to Moscow in a prison van.
Tukhachevsky's interrogation and torture were directly supervised by NKVD Chief Nikolai Yezhov. Stalin instructed Yezhov, "See for yourself, but Tukhachevsky should be forced to tell everything.... It's impossible he acted alone".
thumb|right|upright|Tukhachevsky's bloodstained confession
Stalin commented, "It's incredible, but it's a fact, they admit it". Most of the judges were also terrified. One was heard to comment, "Tomorrow I'll be put in the same place".
Immediately afterward, Yezhov was summoned into Stalin's presence. Stalin asked, "What were Tukhachevsky's last words?"
Leon Trotsky described Tukhachevsky posthumously as an "outstanding talent" for his strategic skills and viewed the purge of the Red Army by the Stalinist bureaucracy as a means of preserving its political position.
Before Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech in 1956, Tukhachevsky was officially considered a fascist and fifth columnist. Soviet diplomats and supporters in the West enthusiastically promulgated this opinion. Then, on January 31, 1957, Tukhachevsky and his codefendants were declared innocent of all charges and were rehabilitated.
Although Tukhachevsky's prosecution is almost universally regarded as a sham, Stalin's motivations continue to be debated. In his 1968 book The Great Terror, the British historian Robert Conquest accuses Nazi Party leaders Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich of forging documents that implicated Tukhachevsky in an anti-Stalinist conspiracy with the Wehrmacht General Staff, to weaken the Soviets' defence capacity. The documents, Conquest said, were leaked to President Edvard Beneš of Czechoslovakia, who passed them to the Soviet Union through diplomatic channels. Conquest's thesis of an SS conspiracy to frame Tukhachevsky was based upon the memoirs of Walter Schellenberg and Beneš.
In 1989, the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union announced that new evidence had been found in Stalin's archives indicating German intelligence's intentions to fabricate disinformation about Tukhachevsky with the goal of eliminating him. "Knowledge of personal characteristics of Stalin – like paranoia and extreme suspicion, had been possibly highest factor in it."
According to the opinion of Igor Lukes, who conducted a study on the matter, it was Stalin, Kaganovich and Yezhov who actually concocted Tukhachevsky's "treason" themselves. At Yezhov's order, the NKVD had instructed a known double agent, Nikolai Skoblin, to leak to Heydrich's Sicherheitsdienst (SD) concocted information suggesting a plot by Tukhachevsky and the other Soviet generals against Stalin. From this knowledge, the NKVD agents had planned a coup d'état with Tukhachevsky and other senior officers in the Red Army. According to Orlov, Stalin uncovered the conspiracy and used Yezhov to execute those responsible. The article lists the Eremin letter as documentary evidence that Stalin was part of the Okhrana, but most historians agree it's a forgery.
Simon Sebag Montefiore, who has conducted extensive research in Soviet archives, states:
It has been speculated that the reason that Stalin had Tukhachevsky and other high-ranking generals executed was to remove a potential threat to his political power. Ultimately, Stalin and Yezhov would orchestrate the arrest and execution of thousands of Soviet military officers as well as five of the eight generals who presided over Tukhachevsky's show trial.
While at the time of his death the Red Army was still firmly in the grip of the cavalry, Tukhachevsky had changed the Red Army's mentality quite significantly. While many machine-gunners were being arrested and Marshal Budyonny spoke in favour of cavalry, influential people, even including Marshal Voroshilov, under whom Tukhachevsky served and who took part in the arrests, began to question the cavalry's position inside the Red Army.