Home > Mikhail Tukhachevsky

Tukhachevsky was born near Vladimir, east of Moscow, into an aristocratic family of Polish origin. He graduated from the Aleksandrovskye Military School in 1914, joining the Semyenovsky Guards Regiment . A lieutenant during World War I, Tukhachevsky was taken prisoner by the Germans and held in Ingolstadt fortress, where he met Charles de Gaulle.

Returning to Russia in 1917Events January 2 The Royal Bank of Canada takes over Quebec Bank. January 22 World War I: President Woodrow Wilson calls for "peace without victory" in Europe. January 25 The Danish West Indies is sold to the United States for $25 million January 25 Anti-, after the Russian RevolutionThe phrase Russian Revolution can refer to two specific events in the history of Imperial Russia: The Russian Revolution of 1905 which was a series of riots and anti-government violence against Czar Nicholas II, leading to the creation of the Duma, but re of 1917Events January 2 The Royal Bank of Canada takes over Quebec Bank. January 22 World War I: President Woodrow Wilson calls for "peace without victory" in Europe. January 25 The Danish West Indies is sold to the United States for $25 million January 25 Anti- he joined the Bolshevik Party. He became an officer in the Red ArmyThis article is about the armed forces of the Soviet Union. See Red Army Faction for the German militant group; Japanese Red Army for the Japanese militant group; and People's Liberation Army for the Chinese Red Army. Red Army and RKKA are abbreviations f and rapidly advanced in rank due to his great ability. During the Russian Civil WarThe Russian Civil War was fought between 1918 and 1920. Following the success of the Russian Revolution, the new Russian ( Bolshevik) government made peace with Germany at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, ratified on March 6 1918. This negotiated peace was th he was given responsibility for defending Moscow. The Bolshevik Defence Commissar Leon TrotskyLeon Davidovich Trotsky ( Russian: ; also transliterated Trotskii Trotski Trotzky ( October 26 ( O. November 7 ( N. 1879 August 21, 1940), born Lev Davidovich Bronstein , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist intellectual. He was an influential politi gave Tukhachevsky command of the 5th Army in 19201920 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar) Events January January 7 Forces of Russian White admiral Kolchak surrender in Krasnoyarsk. January 9 Britain announces it will build 100,000 homes for war veterans. January 10 Leagu, and he led the campaign to capture SiberiaSiberia ( Russian: , common English transliterations: Sibir Sibir' is a vast region of Russia and northern Kazakhstan, constituting all of northern Asia, and extending eastward from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and southward from the Arctic Oc 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.

Tukhachevsky led the Bolshevik armies during the Polish-Soviet War in 1920, and was defeated by Jozef Pilsudski 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. 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.

It may be noted in this context that Pilsudski and his staff were given a great advantage during the Polish-Soviet War by their military intelligence decrypting Soviet Army radio messages . These were encrypted in primitive ciphers and codes , and often involved incredible breaches of security by cipher clerks. The Polish cryptologists and commanders were thus regularly able to look over the shoulders of the Soviet commanders, including Tukhachevsky, and his superior Trotsky. It is curious that, in this regard, the Soviet Army repeated mistakes that had been made in World War I by its Tsarist predecessor vis-a-vis the Germany Army, and that had contributed fundamentally to the Russian defeat at Tannenberg.

Tukhachevsky served as chief of staff of the Red Army ( 1925- 28) and as Deputy Commissar for Defence. He transformed the irregular revolutionary detachments of the Red Army into a well-drilled, professional military. He wrote several books on modern warfare and in 1931 was given a leading role in reforming the army. He held advanced ideas on military strategy, particularly on the use of tanks and aircraft. His ideas were opposed by Stalin's military cronies from the Civil War, Kliment Voroshilov and Semyon Budyonny.

In 1935 Tukhachevsky was made a Marshal of the Soviet Union, aged only 42. But Stalin became jealous of his popularity and feared the potential of the Red Army officer corps to become a source of opposition to his regime. 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.

Stalin had Tukhachevsky and seven other top commanders arrested on May 26, 1937, and charged with conspiracy with Nazi Germany. In a secret trial Tukhachevsky was convicted, and was executed on June 11, 1937.

After Stalin's death, in 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 Benes 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 Wladyslaw Gomulka but, inasmuch as it has not been confirmed by new evidence since the fall of the Soviet Union, the matter remains unresolved.