Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky's Great War and Civil War

Tukhachevsky: Officer of the Red Army

Few people today, excepting perhaps students of military and Soviet history, know much about the Soviet military officer Mikhail (Misha) Nikolaevich Tukhachevsky (1893–1937).  He was, however, the most brilliant military theoretician of the Soviet Union and as the "Red Napoleon"—although he was executed by Stalin in 1937—given much credit for the defeat of the German Army on the Eastern Front during World War I.  After the end of the Civil War, Tukhachevsky played a leading role in military reforms and from 1931 directed the rearmament of the Soviet Union. He was responsible for extensive organizational streamlining and technological modernization of the Red Army and for the establishment of a series of modern military schools. He also wrote numerous books and articles on strategic considerations in modern warfare. 

Tukhachevsky's rise to influence had much to do with his experiences in the World War and the subsequent Russian Civil War, although he demonstrated his brilliance in his military schooling on the eve of the Great War. Despite his demonstrated musical and scholastic aptitude, Mikhail’s potential for university education was interrupted at age 18, when his life unexpectedly gravitated toward the military. He passed some very challenging exams and entered the “seventh [top] form of the 1st Moscow Cadet Corps of Empress Catherine II [Catherine the Great]” on 16 August 1911. Less than a year later, on 1 June 1912, he was awarded the “certificate of graduation” from the Cadet Corps and entered the Alexandrovskii Military College, where he was tutored by V. A. Verezovskii, an expert on the Russo-Japanese War. Two years later, on 12 June 1914, he graduated from the college with some of the highest grades in the school’s history.

Upon graduation from Alexandrovskii Military College, Tuhkachevsky was commissioned into the Semyonovskii Guards Regiment, part of the Tsar’s Imperial Bodyguard (household troops). Such would be the beginning of a very  unpredictable, serendipitous, and transitory Jeckyll/Hyde-like military career. Within weeks of graduation, he went with his regiment to the Prussian Front as a member of the 7th Company of the 2nd Battalion, where he saw various combat actions. In one particular fight, he suffered from an explosion, and the Regimental Order of 27 February 1915 reported him as having been killed in action. He had actually become a German prisoner of war and proved to be particularly irascible in attempting to escape five times. As a result, the Germans transported him to a camp for “bad boys” in the vicinity of the Bavarian stretch of the Danube. There he was believed to be a roommate of De Gaulle, but evidence to support this is conflicting. By 12 October 1917, Tuhkachevsky was back in Russia, as a function of either a sixth escape attempt or formal release. Due to the ensuing Revolution, there was no tsarist military to which he could return; according to one author, he apparently “thought the thing through and just went home.”

While home, Tuhkachevsky’s thoughts about the Revolution coalesced. In 1918, he went to Moscow, met with Trotsky, who was heading the Military Department of the All-Russian Executive Committee, and offered his services to the Communist cause. On 5 April 1918, he became a Communist, and Trotsky appointed him as Military Commissioner at Headquarters Moscow Defense Area. 

In 1918, during the Russian Civil War, he married Marusya Ignateva, who visited him at the front despite the ongoing war. Upon returning from one of her visits she was found smuggling foodstuffs from the front lines to her home. She was brought to Tukhachevsky’s quarters to await a summons for further questioning. While waiting, she committed suicide by shooting herself with her husband’s revolver.  The reason seems to have been that she wanted to prevent any tarnishing of her husband’s career or other adverse consequences for him. Her suicide suggests the beginning of a Hyde-like trend in the growing import of Tukhachevsky’s career, despite his Jekyll-like act of marrying a woman to whom he was very committed.

Such a view is reinforced by his second marriage in 1924 in Smolensk, to a woman named Nina who was 13 years younger than he. While she was from an aristocratic family, their match seems to have been less than ideal, as shortly after their marriage he went to Moscow, leaving her in Smolensk and returning only after the birth of their daughter.

Composite Photo of Comrade Stalin and Tukhachevsky
(I've tried for years to find an original of the two
together, but, apparently, all such photographs
have been erased from history.)

Tukhachevsky must have demonstrated some amazing proclivities because Trotsky gave him the responsibility of forming the Red Army from the key location of the Military Department of the All-Russian Executive Committee. His abilities even  came to the notice of Lenin, who appreciated his “inquiring mind, ebullient energy, and broad initiative in stating and solving problems.” These abilities would lead to an array of command and administrative positions in the Soviet military that would arguably result in the zenith of his career (becoming a marshal in 1935), followed by his lowest point (being purged in 1937 by Stalin, who saw him as a potential threat).

As a practitioner of war, from 1918 to 1921 Tukhachevsky actively participated in the Russian Civil War, where he gained a great deal of experience as a commander in engagements against the “Whites,” Poles, and other anti-revolutionary elements. Not long after his initial work in forming the Red Army, he was sent to the Eastern Front, where he had the task of reorganizing an assortment of battered units into three infantry divisions from which he would form the 1st Revolutionary Army. He then assumed the position of Army commander and had a major impact on  stabilizing the situation on the Eastern Front.

Tukhachevsky was then moved to the Southern front, where he became both the Assistant Front and 8th Army Commander. After conducting a very successful offensive operation as an Army commander, he became the commander of both the 8th and 9th Armies in 1919 and conducted successful counteroffensive operations. In March of 1919, he was moved to the Western Front, where he successfully  commanded the 5th Army until he relinquished it in the fall. He then went to  Moscow to receive the Order of the Red Banner on 7 August, followed in November by his appointment as Commander-in-Chief Southern Front.

On 19 January 1920, he became commander of the Caucasus Front, and in May he was again moved to the Western Front. It was there that he conducted his well-known Polish Campaign, which Naveh describes in four phases. First he conducted an operation that checked the Polish advance. He then conducted an advance of his own, covering a distance of 400 miles in an attempt to move west and south to encircle Warsaw. Third, the Polish conducted their famous  counterattack that held the Soviet Army and resulted in their collapse. Finally, Poland and the Soviets reestablished the boundary for Poland at the Treaty of Riga in March 1921.

Triumphant Polish Officers Displaying Captured Soviet Flags

Tukhachevsky’s attack from the north of Warsaw was supposed to be supported by a simultaneous attack by the Soviet Southern Front emanating from the east and south of Warsaw, which would isolate the city and permit Tukhachevsky to encircle Warsaw from the north. The Southern Front’s failure to isolate the city sparked long-term heated debate in the Soviet military as to who was actually culpable for the Soviet failure in the battle. From Tukhachevsky’s standpoint, it was the Southern Front’s failure to support him, largely influenced by Stalin’s specific influence as a commissar on that front, which resulted in Tukhachevsky’s defeat. In Hyde-like resilience, he never changed this view, even though it implicated Stalin. It is generally held that the open-ended debate on this topic, which permitted the suggestion of Stalin’s failure in this battle, would ultimately lead to Stalin’s eventual purging of Tukhachevsky.

Nevertheless, following his actions on the Western Front, Tukhachevsky was appointed to the Russian General Staff on 22 May. At the end of the Russo-Polish War in 1921, the Army sent Tukhachevsky to crush the sailors revolt at Kronstadt and other counterrevolutionary actions, all of which he dealt with brutally. And then he was appointed commandant of the Red Army Military Academy (a position he held for only six months), followed by a posting to the Western Front. While Richard Simpkin contends it is unknown why Tukhachevsky served only six months at the Academy, Naveh suggests that this appointment was one “reflecting both general recognition of his professional abilities and a determination to settle the military on an institutionalized professional future path.”

Marshal of the Red Army

In May 1924, Tukhachevsky became First Assistant and Deputy Chief of Staff to Frunze and the Principal Director of Studies for Strategy at the Military Academy. In a rare show of Jekyll-mindedness, he and Frunze had a very strong working relationship and friendship. In 1925, under the guidance of Frunze, Tukhachevsky completed the first set of reforms for the Red Army. When Frunze died on 31 October 1925, for reasons that  are still suspect, Tukhachevsky was appointed his successor as the chief of the General Staff.  He would retain this position until 1928, when the military command forced him from this office and appointed him to serve as the commander of the Leningrad Military District.

In 1931, the Soviet High Command brought Tukhachevsky back to Moscow and appointed him as the Red Army’s Technology and Armament Chief and Deputy Commissar of War, a position placing him in charge of both the Red Army’s mechanization and its motorization. Tukhachevsky seemed to have been created for jobs like this. According to Naveh, “His creative touch was to be felt in the realms of technological development, production and operational concepts.” In fact, Naveh asserts that, due to the influence of Tukhachevsky,

At the beginning of 1934 the Red Army’s mechanized formations were armed with the most advanced weaponry and armored fighting vehicles in the world, both in quality and quantity.

For instance, Tukhachevsky was highly influential in the development of airborne units that were well equipped, mobile, and consisting of force structure including light tanks and artillery, recoilless guns, mobile armored vehicles, and well-trained leaders. Additionally, due to his development program, the Soviet Army became equipped with a wide range of aircraft including bombers, reconnaissance planes, and fighters, as well as the first self-propelled artillery and assault guns. His impact in this position made him widely regarded by the French, British, and German missions to the Soviet Union for his work in force structure. In one author’s view, “It was as an organizer and champion of mechanization, however, that Tukhachevsky best served his country.” For his overall performance in force structure development, the Soviet leadership promoted him to marshal of the Soviet Union in 1935.

Regardless of his tremendous performance in developing his military, Tukhachevsky apparently never became a member of Stalin’s inner circle. There are conflicting views and interpretations of exactly what happened when and to whom during Stalin’s purges of his officer corps. However, there is evidence supporting the idea that a complex conspiracy had been developing against Tukhachevsky for years before his eventual mock trial and execution in 1937. This was quite possibly due to the debate that still existed over the Battle of Warsaw. Part of this conspiracy included the removal of Tukhachevsky from his post as the Red Army’s Technology and Armament Chief to the position of Deputy Defense Commissar and Inspector of Military Training. Although this was a demotion, it was during his service in this last position that he wrote and completed the comprehensive 1936 Field Service Regulations. This capstone manual would prove to be his last major written contribution to Soviet military thought.

Rehabilitated: 1963 Stamp Honoring Tukhachevsky

In June 1937, apparently the Hyde-like Stalin collided with the Hyde-like Tukhachevsky for the last time. Soviet authorities arrested Tukhachevsky by order of Stalin on the allegation of treason. Under interrogation, he “admitted” to being a German spy and signed a document of “confession” spattered with his own blood. During a mock trial, Soviet authorities sentenced him to death; he was executed by firing squad on 12 June 1937. Although it was not the first of such executions, some mark this event as “the beginning of the comprehensive purge of the Soviet Officer corps.

Sources: "Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (1893–1937): Practitioner and Theorist of War," Christopher Paul McPadden, Association of the United States Army;  Encyclopedia Britannica; Spartacus