Tukhachevsky was one of the most talented and famous military leaders of the Red Army during the Civil War. He was among the first five marshals of the Soviet Union. Tukhachevsky was shot in 1937, during the purges in the Red Army.
Career choice
Tukhachevsky was born on February 16, 1893 in a noble family. The boy from early childhood was fond of music. He mastered the violin. Much later, the military made friends with composer Dmitry Shostakovich.
On the eve of World War I, Mikhail Tukhachevsky graduated from the Alexander Military School. He was the best in discipline and performance among his peers. Before Tukhachevsky opened attractive career prospects. In the summer of 1914, the military decided to go to the Semenovsky regiment. In the future, he could go to the Academy of the General Staff.
The year before, in Moscow, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, during the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, was introduced to Emperor Nicholas II. Subsequently, throughout his life, the tsarist, and then the Soviet officer sought to achieve the maximum in his career. No doubt he was ambitious and purposeful. Many friends and acquaintances compared him to Napoleon. For example, his indefatigable ambitions in his memoirs published in Prague in 1928, recalled classmate Vladimir Postoronkin.
In the tsarist army
Many times, Mikhail Tukhachevsky took great risks or decided on ambiguous actions in order to take advantage of the opportunities that opened up before him. As a military man, he was very lucky to serve in the period when Russia survived the First World War and the Civil War.
Eloquent and the next episode. Even in peacetime, while studying at the senior year of his military school, Mikhail Tukhachevsky wrote a report to the leadership, in which he reported on the inappropriate behavior of younger cadets. The trial has begun. As a result, three cadets (Krasovsky, Avdeev and Yanovsky) committed suicide.
German captivity
During the First World War, Tukhachevsky was captured by the Germans. In the camp, in Ingolstadt, he met the future president of France, Charles de Gaulle. The conditions of the then captivity were not at all the same as, for example, in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Prisoners, on parole, were allowed to visit a nearby city. Using the exemptions of this system, the tsarist officer fled.
Tukhachevsky Mikhail Nikolaevich, whose brief biography as a field military began precisely with German captivity, hated Germany. Already in the Soviet Union, as the deputy people's commissar of defense, he often delivered accusatory speeches to this country.
Polish campaign
After the October Revolution, Tukhachevsky joined the Bolsheviks. In the Red Army, he quickly achieved success and fame. In the spring of 1920, Tukhachevsky was appointed commander of the Western Front, on which the Red Army fought with Poland. At this point, the White movement was almost universally defeated. Now the Bolsheviks could proceed to implement their plan of the world revolution. If the Red Army captured Poland, then workers' uprisings could begin in the rest of Europe. Lenin then put forward the famous slogan "Through Warsaw to Berlin and Paris."
The apogee of the advance of Tukhachevsky was the appearance of the Red Army in the suburbs of the Polish capital on August 14. However, two days later the counterattack of Pilsudski began. As a result, the Poles reached Minsk. It was a total defeat. It was not connected with the failure of Tukhachevsky personally, but was explained by simple objective reasons. The Russians fought for 7 years since the beginning of World War I. They were worn out. At the same time, the revolutionary mood of the workers in Poland was much weaker than the national desire for independence. For the inhabitants of this country, the arrival of the Bolsheviks was primarily the arrival of the Russians.
The assault on Kronstadt
The peace treaty with Poland was signed on March 18, 1921, at a time when Tukhachevsky crushed the uprising in Kronstadt. He arrived in Petrograd on the 5th. He was instructed to crack down on the rebellious sailors on the neighboring island until March 8, when the opening of the X Party Congress was planned.
The famous assaults of cadets walking on the ice of the Gulf of Finland began. At the same time, at a meeting of the Politburo, Lenin agreed to cancel the surplus appraisal and thus fulfill one of the demands of the rebellious sailors, whose village families were starving due to the fact that the Bolsheviks took away their entire harvest. The rebellion was crushed after the second assault on March 18. On the eve of the rebellious sailors laid down their arms, washed the deck and began to wait for their fate. Some of them emigrated to Finland.
Suppression of peasant rebellion
The Kronstadt uprising was the first part of the Bolshevik military campaign in 1921. After defeating the sailors, Tukhachevsky went to suppress the Antonov rebellion. This peasant revolt began in the Tambov province in the middle of 1920. Alexander Antonov became the leader of the rebels, which is why they began to call the counter-revolutionaries “Antonovites”. Dissatisfied with the Soviet regime, the villagers took up arms and created the Union of the Labor Peasantry. This organization even adopted its own political program. The demands of the peasantry consisted in the overthrow of the hated Bolsheviks and the convening of the Constituent Assembly. Antonovschina arose because of the terrible famine in the village due to the disastrous food surplus and the policy of war communism.
In April 1921, Efraim Sklyansky, who was Trotsky’s right-hand man and his deputy in the Revolutionary Military Council, sent Lenin a memorandum proposing to make Tukhachevsky the chief responsible for the defeat of the Tambov rebels. The hero of the Civil War, however, could not fight with his own people. It was decided that Tukhachevsky Mikhail Nikolaevich would be appointed the sole commander in the Tambov province without any wide publicity in the press. The military was given a month to get rid of the “Antonov gangs”. At the same time, Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky received absolute freedom of action from the center. Time has shown that he took full advantage of it.
Partisan warfare
May 6, Mikhail Tukhachevsky arrived in Tambov. A brief biography of this person is an example of an amazing career fall and take-off. Having suffered a defeat in Poland, this commander put an end to his future. But it was precisely in 1921 that, thanks to the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion and the Antonov uprising, he was able not only to justify himself in the eyes of the Politburo, but also to get an opportunity for further career advancement in the Red Army.
Having assessed the situation on the spot, Mikhail Nikolaevich Tukhachevsky issued Order No. 130 on May 12, according to which the partisan peasants had to surrender to the authorities. If the rebel did not lay down his arms, his family would be arrested. Relatives were kept in special concentration camps for two weeks. If the peasant was not declared even after this period, the family went to Siberia.
Against this background, on May 28, the Red Army went on the offensive. On June 11 a new order came out, the author of which was Mikhail Tukhachevsky. Now the military got the right to shoot citizens who refused to call themselves by name. By August, about 70 thousand relatives were expelled. Interestingly, in the army of Tukhachevsky, the uprising of the Antonovites was also suppressed by the future hero of the Great Patriotic War, 26-year-old Georgy Zhukov.
The use of chemical weapons
In the Tambov province Mikhail Nikolaevich Tukhachevsky took advantage of the new tactics of war. Already in the 30s, at the zenith of his career, he wrote theoretical military works. Several materials were devoted to chemical weapons. Cadets from the city of Orel were offered to apply gas to Tukhachevsky. This technology was used to smoke peasants from the forests.
Gas began to be delayed only after gas masks were brought from Moscow. New tactics bore fruit. In mid-July 1921, Lenin received a report stating that Soviet power was established everywhere in the Tambov province. The author of the paper was Mikhail Tukhachevsky. The biography of the 28-year-old military was marked by another victory at the head of the Red Army. The suppression of the Antonov peasant uprising was the highest point of his practical activity in the army. Since then, he has held senior positions, but has not been to war.
Civil War Demon
Why is Mikhail Nikolaevich Tukhachevsky so important for Soviet history? The biography of this man is an example of the ideal use of the tsarist officer in the Red Army. Having come to power, the Bolsheviks were able to win the Civil War, largely due to the fact that they began to cooperate with military specialists who served with the emperor.
The initiator of this flexible policy was the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, Leon Trotsky. The participation of such an officer as Mikhail Tukhachevsky in the Civil War showed how right Lev Davydovich was. By the way, they were similar in many respects. Trotsky was called the "demon of revolution." Lev Davidovich himself highly praised Tukhachevsky. One day he spoke of the commander as a "demon of the Civil War."
At the sight of the Chekists
In 1929, German intelligence launched a misinformation that the agent of the German General Staff is not anyone but Mikhail Tukhachevsky. The photo of the military leader then turned out to be in the personal file of the Soviet special services. Another campaign of purges in the Red Army passed through the city. The OGPU arrested several thousand tsarist officers. Two of them (Troitsky and Kokorin) testified against Tukhachevsky. Former subordinates accused him of conspiring against the authorities and the desire to arrange a military coup.
The interrogation of Kokorin and Troitsky was reported to Stalin. It was then, in 1930, that the leader of the peoples decided the fate of Tukhachevsky. A black mark was placed on the commander. Nevertheless, Stalin waited several more years, gradually preparing for the total purges in the Red Army that occurred during the Great Terror.
In the early thirties, Tukhachevsky was the head of the Leningrad Military District. November 7, 1933, on the next anniversary of the October Revolution, he led the parade on Red Square. In 1935, he became one of the first five marshals of the Soviet Union. A year later, the military leader was appointed deputy commissar of defense of Voroshilov.
A fall
At this time, tensions increased in Europe. In Germany, the Nazis came to power. War was approaching, and Stalin's suspiciousness grew stronger. It was his fear for his own power that was the main cause of repression in the Red Army. The popular, relatively young and educated Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky in the Great War, Stalin did not need.
On May 1, 1937, after the parade, the top Soviet leadership continued to celebrate the holiday in Voroshilov’s apartment. Stalin then for a toast said that “enemies” inside the country would be identified and exterminated. The repression has already begun, but the armies have not yet touched. A few days after this significant scene, Tukhachevsky was dismissed from the post of deputy people's commissar of defense. He was sent to command the Volga Military District.
On May 22, 1937, the Marshal was arrested in Kuibyshev. During interrogation, Tukhachevsky admitted that he was preparing a military coup. To this end, he allegedly intended to organize the defeat of the Red Army in a future war with the Germans or Japanese. On June 11, the court sentenced Tukhachevsky to be shot for espionage and treason. He was shot that night. Marshall was posthumously rehabilitated in 1957.