Mikhail Tukhachevsky

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Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Tukhachevsky
Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Tukhachevsky

Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (Russian: Михаи́л Никола́евич Тухаче́вский; Polish: Michał Tuchaczewski) (February 16 [O.S. February 4] 1893 – June 12, 1937), Soviet military commander, was one of the most prominent victims of Stalin's Great Purge of the late 1930s.

Tukhachevsky was born on his family estate Alexandrovskoye (currently in Safonovsky District, Smolensk Oblast) into an aristocratic family of Polish origin. He graduated from the Aleksandrovskoye Military School in 1914, joining the Semyenovsky Guards Regiment. A second lieutenant during World War I, Tukhachevsky was decorated for personal courage in the battles. After he was taken prisoner by the Germans in February 1915, he escaped four times from the camps, was captured again, and finally as an incorrigible escapee held in Ingolstadt fortress, where he met another incorrigible - the then captain Charles de Gaulle.

His fifth escape was successful, and he returned to Russia in October 1917. After the Russian Revolution he joined the Bolshevik Party. He became an officer in the Red Army and rapidly advanced in rank due to his great ability. During the Russian Civil War he was given responsibility for defending Moscow. The Bolshevik Defence Commissar Leon Trotsky gave Tukhachevsky command of the 5th Army in 1919, and he led the campaign to capture Siberia from the White forces of Aleksandr Kolchak. He also helped defeat General Anton Denikin in the Crimea in 1920. Both the Kronstadt rebellion and the Tambov peasant revolt were crushed by forces under Tukhachevsky's command.

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[edit] During the Civil War

He became an officer in the Red Army and rapidly advanced in rank due to his great ability. During the Russian Civil War he was given responsibility for defending Moscow. The Bolshevik Defence Commissar Leon Trotsky gave Tukhachevsky command of the 5th Army in 1919, and he led the campaign to capture Siberia from the White forces of Aleksandr Kolchak. He also helped defeat General Anton Denikin in the Crimea in 1920.

[edit] The suppression of anti-Bolshevik uprisings

Both the Kronstadt rebellion and the Tambov peasant revolt were crushed by forces under Tukhachevsky's command. Under direct order from Tukhachevsky state of the art chemical weapons were employed against civil population - rebellious Tambov peasants.[1]

[edit] During the Polish-Soviet War

Tukhachevsky led the Bolshevik armies during the Polish-Soviet War in 1920, and was defeated by Józef Piłsudski outside Warsaw. It was during the Polish war that Tukhachevsky first came into conflict with Stalin. Each blamed the other for the Soviet failure to capture Warsaw, which brought Soviet defeat in the war. Tukhachevsky is commonly criticized for inadequate control of his forces. His orders were frequently disobeyed, even by high-ranking officers, which led the Bolshevik armies to several major failures throughout the campaign (see also 1st Cavalry Army). On the other hand, Tukhachevsky argued that he could not choose his division commanders or move his headquarters from Moscow, for political reasons. The animosity between him and Stalin continued into the 1930s.

[edit] The reform of the Red Army

Tukhachevsky served as chief of staff of the Red Army (1925–1928) and as Deputy Commissar for Defence. He attempted to transform the irregular revolutionary detachments of the Red Army into a well-drilled, professional military. In particular, Tukhachevsky strongly advocated for an industrialized modernization of the Red Army, replacing the traditional reliance on cavalry with a tank-based military. At this early point his ideas were rejected by Stalin as well as rival conservative forces in the Soviet military establishment, and he was removed from the Red Army staff and censured by Stalin for encouraging "Red militarism." Following this, he wrote several books on modern warfare and in 1931, after Stalin had accepted the need for an industrialized military, Tukhachevsky was given a leading role in reforming the army. He held advanced ideas on military strategy, particularly on the use of tanks and aircraft in combined operations.

[edit] The theory of deep operations

His theory of deep operations, where combined arms formations strike deep behind enemy lines to destroy the enemy's rear and logistics[2] [3] [4] [5] [6], were opposed by some in the military establishment[7], but were largely adopted by the Red Army in the mid-1930's. They were expressed as a concept in the Red Army's Field Regulations of 1929, and more fully developed in 1935's 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 the potential effectiveness of deep operations can be found in the Soviet victory over Japan at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol(Nomonhan), where a Soviet Corps under the command of G. K. Zhukov defeated a substantial Japanese force in August-September, 1939.

Due to the widespread purges of the Red Army officer corps in 1937-1939 deep operations briefly fell from favor, only later being gradually re-adopted following the embarrassment of the Red Army during the Winter War of 1939-40 when the Soviet Union invaded Finland. They were used to great success during the Great Patriotic War, in such victories as the Battle of Stalingrad and Operation Bagration.

[edit] The fall

In 1935 Tukhachevsky was made a Marshal of the Soviet Union, aged only 42. In January 1936 Tukhachevsky visited Britain, France and Germany. It was subsequently alleged, and may possibly be true, that during these visits he contacted anti-Stalin Russian exiles and began plotting against Stalin.

Tukhachevsky was arrested on May 22, 1937, and charged with organization of "military-Trotskyist conspiracy" and espionage for Nazi Germany. After a secret trial, known as Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization, Tukhachevsky and eight other higher military commanders were convicted, and executed on June 12, 1937.

On January 31, 1957, Tukhachevsky and his colleagues were declared to have been innocent of all charges against them and were "rehabilitated." Both before and since the fall of the Soviet Union, however, some writers have suggested that there really was a military conspiracy against Stalin in which Tukhachevsky was involved.

In his book The Great Terror (1968), the British historian Robert Conquest argued that German agents, on the initiative of Heinrich Himmler, forged documents implicating Tukhachevsky in a conspiracy with the German General Staff, in order to make Stalin suspicious of him, thus weakening the Soviet Union's defence capacity. These documents, Conquest said, were passed to President Edvard Beneš of Czechoslovakia, who passed them on in good faith to Stalin. This version of events was given credence by a 1961 speech by the Polish Communist leader Władysław Gomułka but, inasmuch as it has not been confirmed by new evidence since the fall of the Soviet Union, the matter remains unresolved.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ History of Communist Party of Soviet Union
  2. ^ Richard Simpkin in association with John Erickson Deep battle : the brainchild of Marshal Tukhachevskii, London, Brassey's Defence, 1987. ISBN 0-08-031193-8
  3. ^ Alexander Vasilevsky The Case of All My Life (Дело всей жизни). 3d ed. Политиздат, 1978 Chapter8 (Russian)
  4. ^ Mikhail Tukhachevsky Mannouere and Artillery (Russian)
  5. ^ Mikhail Tukhachevsky Fashionable Fallacies (Russian)
  6. ^ Mikhail Tukhachevsky About the New Manual of the Red Army (Russian)
  7. ^ John Erickson The Soviet High Command: A Military-Political History, 1918-1941, Routledge, 2001. ISBN 0-71-465178-8

[edit] External links

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