Mikhail Tukhachevsky
Mikhail Tukhachevsky Михаил Тухачевский | |
---|---|
Polish-Soviet War |
Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (Russian: Михаил Николаевич Тухачевский, tr. Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevskiy, IPA: [tʊxɐˈtɕefskʲɪj]; 16 February [O.S. 4 February] 1893 – 12 June 1937), nicknamed the Red Napoleon,[1] was a Soviet general who was prominent between 1918 and 1937 as a military officer and theoretician. He was later executed during the show trials of 1936–38.
He served as an officer in
He later served as chief of staff of the Red Army from 1925 through 1928, as assistant in the People's Commissariat of Defense[5] after 1934 and as commander of the Volga Military District in 1937. He achieved the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1935.
As a major proponent of modernisation of Soviet armament and army force structure in the 1920s and 1930s, he became instrumental in the development of Soviet aviation, and of mechanized and airborne forces. As a theoretician, he was a driving force behind the Soviet development of the theory of deep operations in the 1920s and 1930s. Soviet authorities accused Tukhachevsky of treason, and after confessing during torture he was executed in 1937 during Stalin's and Yezhov's military purges of 1936–1938.
Early life
Tukhachevsky was born at Alexandrovskoye, Safonovsky District (in the present-day Smolensk Oblast of Russia), into a family of impoverished hereditary nobles.[6] 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.[7][8] His great-grandfather Alexander Tukhachevsky (1793–1831) served as a colonel in the Imperial Russian Army. He was of Russian ethnicity.[9] After attending the Cadet Corps in 1912, he moved on to the Aleksandrovskoye Military School , whence he graduated in 1914.
World War I
At the outset of the
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.[10]
Taken prisoner by the
Captivity in Ingolstadt
Fluent in French, there he met Le Monde journalist Remy Roure and shared a cell with Captain Charles de Gaulle.[12] Tukhachevsky played his violin, assailed nihilist beliefs and spoke against Christians and Jews, whom he called dogs who "spread their fleas throughout the world".[13] Later in various works he made Russians familiar with De Gaulle's military thinking.[14] 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.[15] Roure then asked him if he was a socialist, and he replied:
Socialist? Certainly not! What a need for classification you have! Besides, the great socialists are Jews and the socialist doctrine is a branch of universal Christianity. I laugh at money, and whether the land is divided up or not is all one to me. The barbarians, my ancestors, lived in common, but they had chiefs. No, I detest socialists, Jews, and Christians.
According to Roure, Tukhachevsky said that he would only follow Lenin 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.[15]
In another, different occasion, following the February Revolution, Roure observed Tukhachevsky carving a "scary idol from colored cardboard", with "burning eyes", a "gaping mouth", and a "bizarre and terrible nose". He inquired about its purpose, to which Tukhachevsky responded:[16]
"This is Perun. A powerful person. This is the god of war and death." And Mikhail knelt down before him with comic seriousness. I burst out laughing. "Don't laugh," he said, getting up from his knees. - I told you that the Slavs need a new religion. They are given Marxism, but there is too much modernism and civilization in this theology. (...) There is Dazhbog - the god of the Sun, Stribog - the god of the Wind, Veles - the god of arts and poetry, and finally, Perun - the god of thunder and lightning. After some deliberation, I settled on Perun, since Marxism, having won in Russia, will unleash merciless wars between people. I will honor Perun every day."
— Remy Roure
Tukhachevsky's apparent neo-paganism was also corroborated by another prisoner at Ingolstadt, Nikolay Alexandrovich Tsurikov , 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.[17]
Tukhachevsky never denied, and later even confirmed, these 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:
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.[15]
Whether or not Tukhachevsky really gave up on his old views, the assertion that he was a fully-fledged Bolshevik by the time he joined them is considered to be most likely not true.[15]
Tukhachevsky's fifth escape met with success, and after crossing the Swiss-German border, carrying with him some small pagan idols,[17] he returned to Russia in September 1917. Following the October Revolution of 1917, Tukhachevsky joined the Bolsheviks and went on to play a key role in the Red Army despite his noble ancestry.
Russian Civil War
He became an officer in the newly established Red Army and rapidly advanced in rank because of his great ability.[
He 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, using cavalry to disrupt the enemy's rear. In the retreat that followed, Denikin's force disintegrated, and Novorossiysk was evacuated hastily.[19]
In the final stage of the civil war, Tukhachevsky commanded the
Polish-Soviet War
Tukhachevsky commanded the Soviet invasion of Poland during the
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!'[23] 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."[24]
His armies were defeated by
There can be no doubt that if we had been victorious on the Vistula, the revolutionary fires would have reached the entire continent.[25]
His book about the war was translated into Polish and published together with a book by Piłsudski.
Reform of the Red Army
Tukhachevsky fervently criticised the Red Army's performance during the 1926 Summer manoeuvres.[5] He criticised the officers' inability to determine what course of action to take and communicate that with their troops especially harshly.[5] Tukhachevsky noted that initiative among officers was lacking, that they responded slowly to changes in the situation and that communication was poor.[5] This was not purely the officers' fault as the only way of communication from local unit headquarters to the field positions was a single telephone line.[5] In contrast German divisions mobilised shortly after during the interwar period had telephones, radio, horse, cycle and motorcycle messengers, signal lights and flags and pieces of cloth with which messages were to be conveyed mostly to aircraft.[26]
Tukhachevsky reached the position of 1st deputy commissar for
According to Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin regarded Tukhachevsky as his bitterest rival and dubbed him Napoleonchik (little
According to Montefiore:
In 1930, this was perhaps too outrageous even for the Bolsheviks. Stalin, not yet dictator, probed his powerful ally Sergo Ordzhonikidze: "Only Molotov, myself, and now you are in the know.... Is it possible? What a business! Discuss it with Molotov...". However, Sergo would not go that far. There would be no arrest and trial of Tukhachevsky in 1930: the commander "turns out to be 100% clean," Stalin wrote disingenuously to Molotov in October, "That's very good." It is interesting that seven years before the Great Terror, Stalin was testing the same accusations against the same victims--a dress rehearsal for 1937--but he could not get the support. The archives reveal a fascinating sequel: once he understood the ambitious modernity of Tukhachevsky's strategies, Stalin apologised to him: "Now the question has become clearer to me, I have to agree that my remark was too strong and my conclusions were not right at all."[29]
Following this, Tukhachevsky 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.[5] He held advanced ideas on military strategy, particularly on use of tanks and aircraft in combined operations.[5]
Tukhachevsky took a keen interest in the arts, and became a political patron and close friend of composer
Theory of deep operation
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,
It is often stated that the widespread purges of the Red Army officer corps in 1937 to 1939 made "deep operations" briefly fall from favour.[35] However, they were certainly a major part of Soviet doctrine after their efficacy was demonstrated by the Battle of Khalkin Gol and the success of similar German operations in Poland and France. They were used with great success during World War II on the Eastern Front, in such victories as the Battle of Stalingrad [citation needed] and Operation Bagration.[36]
Fall and death
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 appointed military commander of the Volga Military District.[37] 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.[38]
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."[19]
According to Montefiore, a few days later, as Yezhov buzzed in and out of Stalin's office, a broken Tukhachevsky confessed that Avel Yenukidze had recruited him in 1928 and that he was a German agent cooperating with Nikolai Bukharin to seize power. Tukhachevsky's confession, which survives in the archives, is dappled with a brown spray that was later found to be blood-spattered by a body in motion.[39]
Stalin commented, "It's incredible, but it's a fact, they admit it."[39]
On June 11, 1937, the Soviet Supreme Court convened a special
At 11:35 that night, all of the defendants were declared guilty and sentenced to death. Stalin, who was awaiting the verdict with Yezhov, Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich, did not even examine the transcripts. He simply said, "Agreed."[40]
Within the hour, Tukhachevsky was summoned from his cell by NKVD captain Vasily Blokhin. As Yezhov watched, the former Marshal was shot once in the back of the head.[41]
Immediately afterward, Yezhov was summoned into Stalin's presence. Stalin asked, "What were Tukhachevsky's last words?"
Aftermath
Tukhachevsky's family members all suffered after his execution. His wife, Nina Tukhachevskaya, and his brothers Alexandr and Nikolai, both instructors in a Soviet military academy, were all shot. Three of his sisters were sent to the Gulag. His underage daughter was arrested when she reached adulthood and remained in the Gulag until the 1950s Khrushchev Thaw. She lived in Moscow after her release and died in 1982.[42]
“To the Red army, Stalin has dealt a fearful blow. As a result of the latest judicial frameup, it has fallen several cubits in stature. The interests of the Soviet defense have been sacrificed in the interests of the self-preservation of the ruling clique.”
Trotsky on the Red Army purges of 1937.[43]
Leon Trotsky described Tukhachevsky posthumously as a "outstanding talent" due to his strategic skills and viewed the purge of the Red Army by the Stalinist bureaucracy as a means of preserving its political position.[44]
Before
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, British historian
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."[46]
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.[45]
Seeing an opportunity to strike a blow at the Soviet military, Heydrich immediately acted on the information and undertook to improve on it. Heydrich's forgeries were later leaked to the Soviets via Beneš and other neutral nations. While the SD believed that it had successfully fooled Stalin into executing his best generals, in reality, it had merely served as an unwitting pawn of the Soviet NKVD. Ironically, Heydrich's forgeries were never used at trial. Instead, Soviet prosecutors relied on signed "confessions" beaten out of the defendants.[45]
In 1956, NKVD
Simon Sebag Montefiore, who has conducted extensive research in Soviet archives, states:
Stalin needed neither Nazi disinformation nor mysterious Okhrana files to persuade him to destroy Tukhachevsky. After all, he had played with the idea as early as 1930, three years before Hitler took power. Furthermore, Stalin and his cronies were convinced that officers were to be distrusted and physically exterminated at the slightest suspicion. He reminisced to Voroshilov, in an undated note, about the officers arrested in the summer of 1918. "These officers," he said, "we wanted to shoot en masse." Nothing had changed.[51]
It has been speculated that the reason why 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.[52]
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.[5] The horse remained ingrained in the Red Army, however.[5] In peacetime, cavalry made sense to the Red Army; it was effective in smaller actions and internal security actions, many horse riders were available without requiring significant training, and there were the memories of the effectiveness of cavalry during the Civil War, all of which helped the horse in maintaining its central position inside the Red Army.[5] When the Second World War began mixed units were set up, which included both cavalry and tanks; these played a central role in use of the deep operations doctrine during WWII.[5]
Honours and awards
- Imperial awards
- Order of St. Anne, 2nd class with swords, also awarded 3rd class with swords and bow; and 4th class with the inscription "For Courage"
- Order of St. Stanislaus, 2nd class with swords, also awarded 3rd class with swords and bow
- Order of St. Vladimir, 4th class with swords
- Soviet awards
- Order of Lenin (21 February 1933)
- Order of the Red Banner (August 7, 1919)
- Honorary revolutionary weapon (December 17, 1919)
Work
- Kurt Agricola, "Der rote Marschall. Tuchatschewskis Aufstieg und Fall" (The Red Marshall: The Rise and Fall of Tukhachevsky), 1939, Kleine "Wehrmacht" - Bücherei, 5
References
- ^ Котельников, Константин (November 11, 2022). ""Красный Наполеон" Михаил Тухачевский". Diletant (Дилетант).
- ISBN 978-1-135-75840-0.
- ISBN 978-0-385-14333-2.
- ISBN 978-0-19-164713-0.
- ^ )
- ISBN 9781842127261.
- ^ Norman Davies, White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War 1919-20, page 130.
- ^ "The Red Army: Part 3".
- ^ "Жертвы политического террора в СССР". Lists.memo.ru. Retrieved 2013-06-12.
- ^ The Red Army - Page 111 - by Michel Berchin, Eliahu Ben-Horin - 1942
- ^ Weintraub, Stanley. A Stillness Heard Round the World. Truman Talley Books, 1985, p. 340
- ISSN 0035-3299.
- ^ The General: Charles De Gaulle and the France He Saved by Jonathan Fenby p68
- ISBN 978-2-246-83417-52023 vol.1 p.133.
- ^ a b c d Croll, Neil Harvey (2002). Mikhail Tukhachevsky in the Russian Civil War (PhD thesis). University of Glasgow.
- ISBN 978-5-906-99594-0.
- ^ a b Minakov, page 183.
- ^ Minakov, page 184.
- ^ ISBN 9781842127261.
- ^ Pipes, Richard. Russia under the Bolshevik Regime. New York: Vintage Books, 2004.
- ^ Suvorov, Viktor. The Chief Culprit: Stalin's Grand Design to Start World War II. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2008.
- ^ Richard M. Watt (1979), Bitter Glory: Poland and Its Fate, 1918-1939, Simon & Schuster, New York. Page 126.
- ISBN 978-0-307-75468-4.
- ^ Watt (1979), page 128.
- ^ A century's journey: how the great powers shape the world - Page 175 - by Robert A. Pastor, Stanley Hoffmann - Political Science - 1999.
- )
- ^ Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, pages 221-222.
- ^ Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, page 58-59.
- ^ Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, page 59.
- ^ Elizabeth Wilson, Shostakovich: a Life Remembered, p. 39.
- ^ Elizabeth Wilson, pp. 124-5.
- ISBN 0-08-031193-8
- ^ Alexander Vasilevsky The Case of All My Life (Дело всей жизни). 3d ed. Политиздат, 1978 Chapter8 Archived 2007-09-29 at the Wayback Machine (in Russian)
- ISBN 0-7146-5178-8
- ISBN 978-1-4000-7678-9.
- ^ Connor, William (March 1987). "ANALYSIS OF DEEP ATTACK OPERATIONS OPERATION BAGRATION BELORUSSIA 22 JUNE-29 AUGUST 1944" (PDF). armyupress.army.mil. Retrieved 24 March 2019.
- ISBN 5-250-00797-X: p.18
- ^ Barmine, Alexander, One Who Survived, New York: G. P. Putnam (1945), pp. 7-8
- ^ ISBN 9781842127261.
- ^ a b c d e Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, page 225.
- ^ Donald Rayfield, Donald (2005). Stalin and His Hangmen: the tyrant and those who killed for him. Random House. pp. 322–325.
- ^ Sergeyev (1991): p.44
- ^ "Leon Trotsky: How Stalin's Purge Beheaded the Red Army (1937)". www.marxists.org.
- ^ "Leon Trotsky: How Stalin's Purge Beheaded the Red Army (1937)". www.marxists.org.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-510267-3, p. 95
- ^ Sergeyev (1991): p. 3
- ^ "The Sensational Secret Behind Damnation of Stalin". LIFE. Time Inc. 1956-04-23.
- ISBN 978-0-7146-5050-0
- JSTOR 127506.
- ISSN 0954-6545.
- ^ Montefiore, Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar, page 226.
- ^ Barmine, Alexander, One Who Survived, New York: G.P. Putnam (1945), p. 322
Further reading
- Croll, Neil (December 2004). "The role of M.N. Tukhachevskii in the suppression of the Kronstadt Rebellion". Revolutionary Russia. 17 (2): 1–48. S2CID 144649336 – via Taylor & Francis.