Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky

Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky

Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (Tukhachevski, Tukhachevskii), February 16, 1893-- June 11, 1937 is known as a Soviet Marshal. Since 1914 he was an officer of the Russian army. After the Russian Revolution he joined the Bolshevik party in 1918 and held important military commands afterward. During the Russian Civil War he suppressed the Kronstadt rebellion and Tambov rebellion. During the Polish-Soviet War he led the assault into Poland and was stopped at the Battle of Warsaw.

Acting as a deputy Commissar of Defense, he was strongly in favor of modernization and mechanization of the army, against the opinions of supporters of the old style of warfare, such as Semyon Budyonny.

During the Great Purges, he was accused of plotting a coup. On May 26, 1937, Marshal Tukhachevsky and Commanders Iona Emmanuilovich Yakir, Ieronim Petrovich Uborevich, Robert Petrovich Eideman, Avgust Ivanovich Kork, Vitovt Kazimirovich Putna, B.M.Feldman and Vitali Markovich Primakov were secretly arrested and tried by a military tribunal for anti-Communist conspiracy within the Army. They were executed on June 11.

Tukhachevsky and others were rehabilitated posthumously following Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin's cult of personality.