Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Following the civil wars, Tukhachevskii occupied many senior posts in the Red Army, including chief of the Red Military Academy (21 July 1921–24 January 22), assistant chief of staff of the Red Army (1924–November 1925), member of the Revvoensovet of the USSR (7 February 1925–20 June 1934), chief of staff of the Red Army (November 1925–5 May 1928), commander of forces of the Leningrad Military District (5 May 1928–June 1931), deputy chairman of the Revvoensovet of the USSR (11 June 1931–20 June 1934), deputy People’s Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs (11 June 1931–20 June 1934), chief of armaments of the Red Army (from 1931), first deputy People’s Commissar for Defense of the USSR (1936–9 May 1937), and chief of the Directorate of Military Planning of the Red Army (1936–1937). He was also a candidate member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (10 February 1934–26 May 1935). During the interwar years, Tukhachevskii also devoted himself to strategy and military theory, publishing widely on those subjects and developing the concept of “deep battle” (the use of aircraft, tanks, and heavy armor to penetrate and destroy the enemy’s defenses), which became part of the Provisional Field Regulations of the Red Army in 1936 and was successfully utilized by Soviet forces in the latter stages of the Second World War. His magnum opus was Future War (1928), which surveyed the scenarios for victory over all the potential enemies of the USSR. He was also responsible for a number of innovative weapon designs; oversaw aspects of the USSR’s secret military collaboration with German aircraft and chemical weapons experts (in the aftermath of the Treaty of Rapallo, 16 April 1922); and in sum (having overcome the initial resistance to “Red militarism” of J. V. Stalin and his cronies of the civil-war period, notably S. M. Budennyi and K. E. Voroshilov), was the chief architect of the modernized, industrialized Red Army that would emerge victorious from the Second World War.

At the height of the purges, however, in May 1937, Tukhachevskii was suddenly fired from his senior posts and demoted to commander of forces of the Volga Military District (13 May 1937). Shortly afterward, he was arrested (22 May 1937). On 12 June 1937, after a secret trial (“The Case of the Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization”), he was shot alongside seven other senior Red commanders: R. P. Eideman, B. M. Fel′dman, I. E. Iakir, A. I. Kork, V. M. Primakov, V. K. Putna, and I. P. Uborovich. The tribunal was chaired by V. V. Ulrikh and included P. E. Dybenko and the civil-war commanders Budennyi, I. P. Belov, and V. K. Bliukher among its members. Why Stalin ordered his execution remains an open question, but tensions between the two dated back to the civil-war period, when Stalin clashed with Tukhachevskii over strategy during the Soviet–Polish War and may have felt personally slighted by Tukhachevskii’s criticisms of the 1st Cavalry Army (in which Stalin served as chief political commissar). The case against Tukhachevskii rested largely on documents passed to the NKVD by President Edvard Beneš of Czechoslovakia and other “neutral parties,” which may have had their origin in the headquarters of the Gestapo in Berlin (the Germans wishing to fell Tukhachevskii in order to weaken Soviet defenses) or even among White émigré officers and politicians in France (notably S. N. Tret′iakov). Tukhachevskii was posthumously rehabilitated by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, on 31 January 1957, but suspicions remain in some circles that he really was involved in some plot against the Soviet leadership (although not the one of which he was found guilty). Tukhachevskii’s widow, Nina Evgen′evna, was executed on 16 October 1941.

Following his rehabilitation, numerous streets and other edifices were renamed in Tukhachevskii’s honor, and his likeness appeared on Soviet postage stamps (including the 4-kopek issue of 1963) and elsewhere. In fiction, he was the eponymous hero of L. I. Rakovskii’s tale Mikhail Tukhachevskii (1967) and was portrayed in the films Pyl′ pod solntsem (“Dust beneath the Sun,” dir. M. Gedris, 1977), Deti Arbata (“Children of the Arbat,” dir. A. A. Eshpai, 2004), and Tukhachevskii: zagovor marshala (“Tukhachevskii: The Marshal’s Plot,” dir. I. Iu. Vetrov, 2010). Interestingly, Tukhachevskii was almost the only Soviet figure portrayed at all positively in the Polish feature 1920 Bitwa Warszawska (“Battle for Warsaw, 1920,” dir. Jerzy Hoffman, 2011).