Mikhayl Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky
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For more information on Mikhayl Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky, visit Britannica.com.
(1893 - 1937), prominent Soviet military figure; strategist, commander, weapons procurer.
Mikhail Tukhachevsky is one of the most important and controversial figures in the history of the Soviet armed forces. Born into aristocracy, he attended prestigious imperial military schools and academies before joining the communist cause and becoming a fervent Bolshevik. He served in World War I and was taken prisoner by the Germans. He escaped, and later commanded Red Army troops in the civil war. Tukhachevsky held numerous important posts within the Red Army, including chief of the Red Army Staff, Chief of Armaments, and Commander of the Leningrad Military District. In 1935 he was awarded the highest military honor of Marshal of the Soviet Union.
Tukhachevsky was an innovative and shrewd military strategist who theorized combat scenarios for future wars, created new means of employing forces, and worked tirelessly for the implementation of his ideas into the rearmament and reform of the armed forces. He incessantly called for more resources to be devoted to rearmament, in spite of numerous competing demands on limited resources from other state sectors.
Tukhachevsky wrote many articles about military tactics and strategy, the most important of which was Future War (1928). This 700-page treatise surveyed the combat potential of all countries neighboring the USSR, offering a range of combat scenarios in the event of war. Together with his military colleagues, Tukhachevsky developed the tactical force employment concept of deep battle. This maneuver involved the use of tanks and aircraft to penetrate deep into the enemy's defense and destroy his forces. The deep battle concept was incorporated into Soviet 1936 Field Regulations and was utilized in the Red Army's combat operations against the German Army in the second half of World War II. The deep battle concept also found expression in NATO military doctrine in the 1980s. Tukhachevsky's contributions arguably rendered him the most prescient and talented strategist in the Red Army in the 1920s and 1930s.
While commander of troops in the Leningrad Military District, Tukhachevsky worked closely with designers and theorists to develop a variety of new weapons and methods for employing them. In addition, he mastered the technical details of complex weapons systems, from aircraft engines to dirigibles and rocket propulsion systems. Tukhachevsky also oversaw aspects of the secret military collaboration with German aircraft and chemical weapons experts, urging the Germans to share more of their knowledge and experience than they were sometimes willing. When tensions developed in Manchuria in 1931, presenting the threat of war to the Soviet Union from East and West, defense production became a higher priority, and many of Tukhachevsky's projects came to fruition.
Tukhachevsky's relationship with Josef Stalin, who ordered his execution in 1937 during the Great Terror, is controversial and unresolved. The origins of the tension between Stalin and Tukhachevsky have been traced to several events, documents, and rumors. Possible factors include: conflicts between Stalin and Tukhachevsky over the command of the Battle for Warsaw in 1920; Tukhachevsky's criticism of the role of the cavalry army in the civil war for which Stalin served as chief political commissar; Tukhachevsky's warnings of the German military threat to the USSR; and documents falsified by Germans or Czechoslovak agents alleging Tukhachevsky's intent to overthrow the Soviet leadership together with Nazi forces.
Bibliography
Alexandrov, Victor. (1963). The Tukhachevsky Affair. London: MacDonald.
Samuelson, Lennart. (1999). Plans for Stalin's War Machine: Tukhachevskii and Military-Economic Planning. New York: St. Martin's.
Stoecker, Sally. (1998). Forging Stalin's Army: Marshal Tukhachevsky and the Politics of Military Innovation. Boulder, CO: Westview.
—SALLY W. STOECKER
| Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky | |
|---|---|
| February 16 1893 – June 12, 1937 | |
![]() Marshal of the Soviet Union Mikhail Tukhachevsky |
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| Place of birth | |
| Allegiance | |
| Rank | Marshal of the Soviet Union |
| Battles/wars | Russian Civil War, Polish-Soviet War |
Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (Russian: Михаи́л Никола́евич Тухаче́вский; Polish: Michał Tuchaczewski) (February 16 [O.S. February 4] 1893 – June 12, 1937), was a Soviet military commander, chief of the Red Army (1925–1928), and 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
Both the Kronstadt rebellion and the Tambov peasant revolt were suppressed 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]
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
In the book The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression is said that Tukhachevsky's confession, written by him, is stained in blood. We can assume that he and many of other executed officials were tortured.
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