MIKHAIL TUKHACHEVSKY

THE ‘RED NAPOLEON’ 1893-1937 SOVIET RUSSIA

A member of a poor noble family, Tukhachevsky was given a military education and joined the elite Semyonovsky Guards in the Imperial Russian Army in 1914. Serving as a junior officer during WWI, he was captured by the Germans in 1915 and shared a cell with French POW Charles de Gaulle at Ingolstadt.

He escaped captivity in 1917, and joined the new Bolshevik Red Army.

Tukhachevsky quickly rose through the

Soviet ranks during the Russian Civil War, and commanded various campaigns against White Russian forces. Such was his success that he was chosen to command the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1920. Tukhachevsky advanced boldly but too quickly, and his armies were defeated at the Battle of Warsaw.

At about the same time, he began to clash with the then Bolshevik commissar, Joseph Stalin. Tukhachevsky went on to make Red Army reforms and was promoted to marshal in 1935, but was executed in 1937 as part of Stalin’s ‘Great Purge’.

LEFT: Tukhachevsky was nicknamed the ‘Red Napoleon’ by foreign press agencies, although his military achievements did not compare in glory with the French emperor