On M.N. Tukhachevskey

M.N. Tukachevseky has become a very prominent figure among the Red Army commanding staff, although this had happened after he had been eliminated, and more precisely after Krushchev came to power. It is astonishing how authors talk about “his theory of deep operations” as if it really was his theory! Such observation only goes to show, how ill informed many academics actually are! How they had failed to study the actual Soviet military thought and those who actually created it and wrote about it and formed it. Let me say that M.N. Tukhachevseky had absolutely nothing to do with this theory.

Traindafilov and Shaposhnikov were prominent Soviet military strategists and tacticians, while Tukhachevskey was, if anything, a prominent political propagandist in the army, and nothing more. The evidence is Tukhachevskey’s own books and articles which include nothing more than the standard political propaganda phrases of the time. To those who have a doubt, I propose that they read Traindafilov for example, and then read any of Thukachevskey’s published works in order to understand the difference between a real military strategist and a Soviet military propagandist. There is no need for an extensive military training in military strategy for any historian, in order to understand that Thukhachevsky was not such. His articles on modernization of the Red Army could only impress an incompetent reader, and shock anyone who has a slight idea of the significance of numbers and their implication vies à vie the army and the military industry. Tukhachevsky’s own suggestions for modernization of the Red Army were nothing more than a proposition for Red militarism, of which he was rightfully accused towards the end of his life.

It is frustrating to observe how many historians continue to gather information on the tragic end of Tukhachevsky, and fail to even question the sole fundamental of his representation as a prominent Soviet military strategist and a commander. The evidence of his Civil War experience represents some of the most outrageous orders for terror against the civilian population, while his real combat experience as a military commander represents his personal failure as such, and his responsibility for the defeat of the Red Army by the Polish regular army in 1920. Yet, we have authors who either ignore the evidence, or simply fail to study it at all, and continue to publish self created stories about the great military strategist and commander fallen as an innocent victim to Stalin’s blind terror. Could anyone show me any evidence of Tukhachevsky’s ingénues military strategy? Could anyone explain how realistic exactly was his suggestion to modernize the Red Army? Anybody?