Killing Tukhachevsky

Power Politics in The High Command

Tukhachevsky persists in the historical imagination as a deeply fascinating character. The “Red Napoleon” who never was, a brilliant military thinker whose life ended in abrupt fashion at the hands of the NKVD. The execution of Tukhachevsky and his allies has traditionally been characterized as a carefully orchestrated campaign of lethal repression carried out to ensure Stalin’s absolute power. This Cold War era narrative, which has largely been discredited with the opening of Soviet archives, has been used to show how Stalin’s ostensible megalomania sabotaged his own army’s prospects on the eve of war. On the other end, many contemporary Marxist-Leninists, adhering to the view of Stalin’s Soviet state, justify the execution of Tukhachevsky on the grounds that he was the ringleader of a fascist plot.

In contrast to both of these theories, I draw on the work of various historians to argue that the execution of Tukhachevsky was the outcome of a factional power-struggle between two competing visions over the strategic direction of the Red Army. Tukhachevsky’s notorious personal power ambitions and his embittered military-strategic opposition to Stalin’s officer, Voroshilov, were perceived as a source of internal disunity capable of a producing a crisis that could potentially derail the war effort. Historian Vladmir Rogovin, in reference to the Stalin-era purges, stressed the importance of needing “to separate the fantastic and absurd charges from the evidence of the defendants' genuine anti-Stalinist activity” (Rogovin, 1998, p. 482). This requires going beyond Stalin’s psychology and the sensationalism of the Moscow Show Trials to find the power-struggle and oppositional politics at the heart of this matter.

Historian Peter Whitewood, one of the few western historians who has done extensive historical research on the Stalin era Soviet military purges, explains how Cold-War era traditional accounts of the military purge rely on largely falsified evidence.

Common to Cold War accounts of the military purge is a story about a fabricated dossier of evidence that Stalin supposedly used to incriminate the senior officers he wanted out of the way. This dossier apparently contained falsified materials, which provided a smoking gun: a group of leading Red Army officers, with German assistance, were planning a coup … There is nothing to suggest that the dossier story has any basis in reality. Aside from the problems with the existing sources, there is also a complete absence of any other reliable evidence. After the opening of the Russian archives in the early 1990s, no piece of documentary evidence has been found to support the story (Whitewood, 2015, pp. 4-5)

The notion that Tukhachevsky was simply killed off because he was an obstacle in Stalin’s path to absolute personal power is rooted in a cold-war era understanding of the Stalinist period that has little evidential support. The actual motivations underlying these purges must be understood in the context of an impending total war which enabled drastic military decision-making. Stalin was infamous for his willingness to use mass violence to carry out state objectives, and the historian Geoffrey Roberts notes how Stalin’s indifference to the costs of mass violence sometimes proved necessary in the titanic struggle against Nazism. Roberts (2006, p. xii) writes that Stalin’s “methods were unpalatable but effective, and perhaps unavoidable if victory was to be secured,” and that he was “a leader prepared to compromise, adapt and change, as long as it did not threaten the Soviet system[.]” As we will see, the political maneuvering of Tukhachevsky and his allies against Stalin’s loyalists in the military elite was perceived as a threat to the unity of the Soviet system, a perception which was greatly exacerbated by domestic and international concerns. At the same time, the purge was not without considerable costs, deeply affecting military morale and organization, as it decimated talented officers and temporarily cast the Red Army into a state of disarray (Whitewood, 2015).

Vyacheslav Molotov’s remarks on the purges give us a glimpse into the state’s reasoning at the time. In the 1970s, when commenting on Tukhachevsky and other executed senior officers, he stated: “the main thing, however, is at the decisive moment they could not be depended on” (Whitewood, 2015, p. 276). This statement has often been dismissed as a justification for the crimes of Stalinism by Stalin’s right-hand man, but, as Whitewood notes, it speaks to a certain truth: for the leadership, the loyalties of Tukhachevsky remained unclear at a pivotal moment when such ambiguity was intolerable. Geoffrey Roberts writes:

Tukhachevskii clashed personally with his immediate chief, People’s Commissar for Defence and long-time Stalin crony, Kliment Voroshilov, and there was a background of tension between the Red Army and the communist party which placed a question mark over the military’s political loyalty in times of severe crisis. (Roberts, 2006, p.19).

Geoffrey Roberts (2006, p. 18) adds that an actual conspiracy was “not so far-fetched” given the existing political tensions. Sergei Minakov’s scholarship fleshes out this line of thinking by shedding light on the tense political struggle unfolding in the military elite. He draws on letters, reports, and other pieces of archival evidence that reveal Tukhachevsky’s ambitions to unseat Stalin’s main officer in the military, Voroshilov, due to disagreement over the direction of the Red Army’s organization that became increasingly politicized. Concurrent and preceding events also revealed serious tensions between the Red Army and the Party, exposing various vulnerabilities in the Soviet System. Until the war itself, Stalin never had unified control over the direction of the military, and various opposition elements always presented a legitimate threat. This combination of Party and Military tensions, political infighting at the highest echelons of power, and an intensifying international situation were all contributing factors to the eventual demise of Tukhachevsky.

The Background of the Red Army Opposition in the Stalin-era

While Stalin’s ruthless collectivization campaign was able to successfully support rapid industrialization and wartime food allocation, the human cost was immense (Harrison, 2008). Many in the Red Army, who played an important role in realizing the initial collectivization plans, felt alienated by the on-the-ground realities of collectivization and outwardly sympathized with the “kulaks.”  Historian Roger Reese writes

Despite the danger of being labeled a "defender of kulaks," soldiers spoke on their behalf, characterizing them as helpers of Soviet power because they produced large amounts of wheat and helped poor peasants (Reese, 1996, p. 27).

S.J Main (1995) notes that the upheaval engendered by collectivization had aroused the dismay in a number of army officials. Notably, these officials publicly voiced their opposition to the collectivization, and formed an “inter-army opposition” engaged in open dispute with the leadership. Main (1995, p. 339) acknowledges that this conflict was no “mere inner-party debate, which could be solved behind the closed doors of Politburo or Orgburo sessions” as the ensuing social unrest in the countryside substantially raised the stakes of the disagreement. Lynne Viola (1996, p.5) describes the conflict in the countryside as a “virtual civil war” between the peasantry and the state, and it is clear that any officials siding with the peasantry would have been seen as posing a risk to the stability of the regime. The immediate upheaval of collectivization was considered by many officials to be a costly blunder and the leadership feared the prospect of rebellious sentiments in the peasantry being harnessed by a Red Army opposition that could possibly change the Soviet policy on the countryside by force. 

There has been a long-held misconception in Soviet historiography that the military was an arm of the Soviet state that Stalin wielded with lethal precision to carry out his dictatorial ambitions, but in reality military loyalties were fragmented. Roger Reese (1996) describes how the anti-Stalinist sentiment in the Army could be described as a “Bukharinist stronghold” representing an anti-collectivization line that was ultimately left unutilized by Bukharin. Reese (1996) convincingly argues that this could have been a powerful potential base of support if Bukharin was able to act sooner in his struggle against Stalin. Although this possibility, Reese concludes, was precluded by the fact that Bukharin did not have the political skillset or leadership capacity to effectively organize an anti-Stalinist opposition, a sentiment echoed by Stephen Kotkin who describes Bukharin as a political amateur (Kotkin, 2017). The anti-collectivization movement, despite its potential, “never became a movement but remained a sentiment in need of leadership,” eventually ceding to the inevitably of collectivization (Reese, 1996, p. 45). While politically and theoretically, Tukhachevsky and Bukharin had little in common (Tukhachevsky was a strong proponent for collectivization and believed it to be necessary in the war effort), the 1928 struggle revealed the fault lines in the strained Soviet civil-military relationship, which must of weighed heavily on Stalin’s mind as War approached and internal struggles waged on.

The instability engendered by the collectivization policies of the 1930s also placed Stalin directly under the cross-hairs. Different opposition strands contemplated Stalin’s demise as a way of ending the chaos on the country-side. Charters Wynn (2008, p. 103) writes that “there was considerable opposition to Stalin and his policies in 1932,” that carried a legitimate threat of Stalin’s violent removal. Wynn (2008, p. 103) goes on to describe an interaction at a social event when Tomsky whispered in Stalin’s ears: “Soon our workers will start shooting at you,” and another when OGPU party member I.P Nechaev announced that “If he caught sight of Stalin he would shoot him.” Indeed, Kotkin (2014, p. 1107) writes that:

The archives record oblique instances when potential assassins had been able to approach [Stalin] or stage themselves at places he was likely to appear … Stalin was within reach of a determined assassin, to say nothing of a regime insider … Whatever the particulars, assassinating Stalin was not beyond contemplation in the politburo.

According to Bukharin’s supporter Jules Humbert-Droz, Bukharin and Rykov at one point had frantically decided to employ “individual terror” to end Stalin’s rule,

There is even evidence that Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky had, in desperation, decided they had no choice but to kill Stalin, whom they had come to consider the next Genghis Khan … the Swiss Communist Jules Humbert-Droz, who supported the ‘‘Rightists,’’ recalled Bukharin telling him that ‘‘they had decided to use individual terror to get rid of Stalin.’’ (Wynn, 2008, p. 103)

Additionally, we must also consider the 1932 Ryutin Platform in which Ryutin, a follower of Bukharin, and various Party members drafted a call to overthrow Stalin by force as a response to his policies in the country-side. Rogovin (2019) emphasizes that this plan was not merely the isolated ravings of a lone contrarian, but reflected a wider mood of discontent in the early 1930s with:

more than 500 major uprisings each with thousands of participants; in many instances, communists and Komsomol members participated in these rebellions … In one case, even the regional leader of the GPU led the uprising (Rogovin, 2019. p. 204)

Additionally, Rogovin theorizes that the subversive document did not just convey the authorial voice of Ryutin, whose own writings typically displayed the simplicity of an uneducated mid-level bureaucrat, but seemed to reflect the more sophisticated contributions of prominent Party higher-ups, as well as insider knowledge of Party debates—which Ryutin would have not been a part of. The Ryutin group can credibly be described as an actual organized opposition group with the explicit aim of violently overthrowing the Soviet leadership. While Stalin was haunted by the phantasms of various nebulous terrorist groups described in the eventual show-trials, these absurd and ever-present terror-plot conspiracies find their origin in real anti-Stalin opposition.

With the benefit of hind-sight, it is easy to proclaim that Stalin’s power was unstoppable and the efforts of opposition groups were futile, but this overstates the stability of the both the Soviet state and the volatile political dynamics at play during this period. The instability of the collectivization period left the course of future events far from foreclosed, and Stalin’s removal was seen as a distinct possibility that had emerged from the interplay between collectivization opposition and military opposition. The purges of the “Tukhachevsky group” should be situated in the context of inter-military disunity and the various opposition strands emboldened by domestic tensions. But unlike the hopelessly mediocre Bukharin or the increasingly irrelevant Trotsky, Tukhachevsky’s intellectual prowess was matched by his political ambition, ability, and charisma. He was a leader capable of harnessing oppositional sentiment if circumstances pushed him in that direction (Minakov, 2016).

The Soviet military apparatus, like any other, has always been susceptible to subversion and Bonapartist takeovers. It is one of the reasons the early Bolsheviks originally did not even want a standing army at all. They understood the risks that came with a powerful military. They were forced to do so out of the necessity of winning the civil war. Fears around the reliability of the Red Army proved to be a persistent issue, especially as these fears were at times validated by high-profile mutinies:

The civil war saw numerous damaging mutinies by military specialists and desertions to the Whites, which did little for their public image. One of the most high-profile betrayals was the mutiny of Mikhail Murav’ev, the commander of the eastern front … Not only had the Red Army once again proved to be ill-disciplined during combat, but Murav’ev’s defection was very high profile and demonstrated the dangers of employing military specialists at the apex of the Red Army (Whitewood 2015, p. 28).

These high profile defections cast a shadow of suspicion over all military specialists. Whitewood notes that:

A certain number of military specialists serving in the Red Army will have held negative, and sometimes openly hostile, opinions about the Soviet system. Similarly, there will have been military specialists with secret connections to the White movement (Whitewood, 2015. p. 67).

The existence of any subversive or disloyal elements within proximity of decision-making at the apex of the Red Army would have been a legitimate concern. Tukhachevsky embodied these fears. He came from a background of nobility and was an officer in the imperial army before joining the Red Army in 1918. Kotkin (2014, p. 575) describes him as “megalomaniacally ambitious,” a personality trait that only heightened suspicions around his suspect background. Tukhachevsky firmly believed that the leadership of the Red Army should be the “the locus of command” in guiding the revolution, a military-centered approach to socialism that did not pair well with the Bolsheviks long-standing anxieties around Bonapartist insurrection tracing back to the civil war (Rieber, 2022, p. 65). Tukhachevsky caught the attention of the post-Civil War White movement, who tended to see him as a savior of sorts. The historical background of Tukhachevsky’s Bonapartist reputation and his allure to White movements is important to consider:

…rumors also appeared in White intelligence reports and were presumably given some credibility. One report from 15 February 1922, for instance, detailed that “a person, closely acquainted with Tukhachevskii, has indicated that he is a person of outstanding ability and great administrative and military talents. But he is not without ambition, and having recognized his own strength and authority, [he] imagines himself as a Russian Napoleon … Some of this material suggested that plans were already in preparation for an attempted military coup. For instance, a report from the OGPU’s foreign department from March 1924 detailed that a White officer, a certain Samoilov, an aide to General Kutepov, intended to make contact with Tukhachevskii to offer him a role in a military coup and in the establishment of a military dictatorship. Seemingly, Tukhachevskii’s ambition and the rumors about his supposed Bonapartism had encouraged opportunist White officers to try and make contact. It is unlikely that Samoilov would have wanted to get Tukhachevskii on board if his public reputation was one of a dedicated Bolshevik loyalist (Whitewood, 2015, p. 71).

This intelligence suggests quite clearly that Tukhachevsky was perceived by Whites as disloyal to the Bolsheviks, a Bonapartist, and someone who could potentially be recruited into a White-backed coup. The fact that he was seen as a potential ally and leader to the Soviet Union’s subversive enemies would not have been lost on central leadership. This reputation extended to other, more powerful enemies of the USSR. Sergei Minakov (2016) describes how Tukhachevsky had a resounding popular reception in the leading capitalist countries. He was often described as the humane alternative to Stalin, the “non-Bolshevik” Russian and the potential catalyst for a rebirth of a Soviet state on more palatable terms to the West. Tukhachevsky’s background was a major contributing factor to his Bonapartist reputation, but it was also a product of his own oppositional, erratic, and power-seeking behavior within military politics.

The Internal Struggle for Power in the Military Elite

Throughout Tukhachevsky’s career, he continually clashed with others and eventually found himself in a bitter political conflict with a group of Stalin loyalists. Voroshilov, while not a particularly interesting or memorable war leader, was a dependable and loyal Stalinist. Tukhachevsky, on the other hand, was an original military thinker who had innovative yet controversial ideas around military organization. He was not afraid to politically maneuver in order to exert the greatest amount of influence over the direction of the Red army (Minakov, 2016).

Stalin’s group fought with Tukhachevsky’s group over issues of military modernization and the use of cavalry. Voroshilov was dismayed at how Tukhachevsky’s plans to rapidly increase the pace of mechanization would effectively abolish the cavalry. Voroshilov's ally, Budennyi, in reference to Tukhachevsky’s group, decried how “[t]hese scoundrels are leading a systematic campaign for the liquidation of the cavalry” (Whitewood, 2015, p. 110). Minakov (2016) describes how debates that were ostensibly about specific military questions were actually emblematic of a broader power struggle over hegemony of the military apparatus. More fundamentally, Budennyi and Voroshilov opposed Tukhachevsky’s seemingly ceaseless ambition to drive the direction of military reform, distinctly noting the “political character” of the manner in which Tukhachevsky sought to dominate decision-making and push Stalin loyalists out (Whitewood, 2015). In an unsent letter, Voroshilov noted Tukhachevsky’s drive to consolidate power with exasperation: “You insisted on concentrating this enormous power in the Staff of the Red Army” he complained (Whitewood, 2015, pp. 106-107). Voroshilov was concerned with Tukhachevsky's drive to divest various governmental departments of their power in favor of centralizing decision-making powers into an organizational body in which Tukhachevsky himself was in control. In this way, Tukhachevsky’s military-vision cannot be separated from his own personal power ambitions.

Tukhachevsky did not take well to the obstruction of his efforts. In one episode, for instance, Tukhachevsky lashed back at Stalin’s men—with Stalin present—accusing “Voroshilov and Budennyi of being part of an exclusive clique that was dominating military politics” (Whitewood, 2015, p. 191). Stalin was likely fully aware of these political battles, conscious of the position of his loyalists, while also cognizant of the drawbacks of shutting out an innovative thinker like Tukhachevsky. For the time being, a divided military leadership ensured Stalin’s own hegemony, so there was no rush to intervene. Tukhachevsky’s greatest challenge in navigating the politics of the military elite was his distance from Stalin—the two were not particularly close and this presented serious difficulties in his ability to implement his ideas. Naturally, Tukhachevsky saw weakening the influence of Stalin loyalists as necessary in cementing his own personal control over the direction of the Red Army (Minakov, 2016).

Tukhachevsky even advocated to expand his Red Army’s Staff reach to include direct control over industrial policy and the very economic institutions of the state (Whitewood, 2015). Tukhachevsky’s drive to expand the power of his role to unprecedented heights alienated many of his colleagues. Yet despite pushback from interdepartmental rivals, Tukhachevsky and his allies continued to advocate for radical policies of centralization. His hubris led him to making wildly unrealistic and reckless proposals that earned the ire of his opponents in the military elite, including Stalin himself. Whitewood (2015) writes that Tukhachevsky’s 1930 rearmament plans were “unrealistic in view of the Soviet Union’s current industrial capacity,” and, additionally, David R Stone (1996) further adds that “his creative thought finally crossed the border into complete fantasy when he turned his attention to the Soviet economy, finally pushing his superiors too far.” Voroshilov derided Tukhachevsky’s fantastical plans as “politically harmful” and Stalin described the inevitable outcome of implementing these ideas as “worse than any counter-revolution” and the “liquidation of socialist construction.” These plans earned Tukhachevsky a reputation of being a “loose cannon” (Stone, 1996, p. 1381).

Sergei Minakov (2016) asserts this was the heart of the real conflict at play, an endlessly ambitious political actor with clear motives to wrest control of the military apparatus from Stalin loyalists. Minakov (2016) describes Tukhachevsky’s drive to dominate decision-making as completely obsessive; his persistent demands to extend his power over the military in the face of obvious opposition from an increasingly frustrated central leadership revealed the relentless character of Tukhachevsky’s pursuit of military power. For these transgressions, Tukhachevsky was side-lined by Stalin—only to be later rehabilitated when tensions arose between the USSR and Japan. The leadership was driven into a panic by the emerging conflict, which pushed Stalin to bring the controversial, yet brilliant, officer back. Tukhachevsky’s expertise was now deemed worthwhile as his once radical ideas around rearmament were seen as applicable to resolving the arising situation. It was a marriage of tactical expediency that never abated Stalin’s original apprehensions that deepened as war drew nearer. Whitewood (2015) notes how Tukhachevsky’s return to the center of the military elite refueled old rivalries and tensions, and he became the subject of mass suspicion and investigations even as he carried out his leadership role. Stalin was likely deeply weary of Tukhachevsky’s arrogance, unpredictability, and obvious power fantasies. Despite these critiques, he still recognized his skill as a very sharp and talented thinker—and these two realizations existed in tension with another.

Tukhachevsky’s “friendliness” with the Germans was also a point of contention that likely contributed to his eventual downfall. While many members of the military elite had collaborated with the Germans in the 1920s, including Voroshilov, Whitewood (2015) notes that Tukhachevsky may have called for closer collaboration with Germany in 1936, a time when this was deeply taboo given the the rising military tensions between the two countries. For some context, Whitewood describes how any kind of positive or sympathetic insinuation about Nazi Germany was greeted with harsh repression at this time. He writes “in May 1936 a teacher at the Frunze academy was arrested for apparently saying that Hitler reflected the national sentiment in Germany” (Whitewood, 2015, pp. 182). Tukhachevsky’s indifference to these political norms of Soviet patriotism on the precipice of war unsurprisingly gave him an aura of suspicion. There is no evidence to suggest that Tukhachevsky had an ideological sympathy to Nazism or that he actively sought the support of the Germans in an anti-Stalin plot; rather, the strictly military benefit of collaboration with a sophisticated army like Germany’s was appealing to him. Yet he was completely oblivious to how this scandalous behavior would be perceived, revealing his single-mindedness and cementing his reputation as an unreliable political actor.

Tukhachevsky genuinely felt that opposition to his military-political vision would spell defeat for the USSR. This outlook eventually became a political liability. Tukhachevsky’s opposition derived from the misguided perception that his genius, and his genius alone, could ensure the success of the Red Army in the war. Minakov (2016) writes that it is not unlikely that Tukhachevsky’s group, convinced of the wrong-headedness of Voroshilov’s approach, would have drawn out plans of an emergency military-coup in the event of a dire situation engendered by a military failure caused by the Stalin leadership. An important document that provides insight into Tukhachevsky’s opposition to the Politburo’s operational plan was his “Plan of Defeat” letter, which he, notably, wrote after his first interrogation. Despite this timing, there is good reason to believe that the document is authentic. Rogovin writes:

A few days after this statement, Tukhachevsky sent Stalin a letter which was called, "Plan of Defeat:' … The document displays the author's profound knowledge of the international political situation of the time, high professionalism and erudition in military questions. It is written in the language of military-scholarly literature, which was obviously inaccessible to the incompetent investigators of the NKVD … Describing conditions under which the Red Army "might suffer a serious defeat in its first operations;' Tukhachevsky once again turned to the shortcomings of the authors who had written an operational plan in which the actions of the Belorussian Front would not be secured with the necessary forces and supplies (Rogovin, 1998, p. 435).

Tukhachevsky’s persistence in asserting personal control over the Red Army was indicative of his opposition to following, what he saw, as the doomed leadership of a vastly inferior military theoretician, Voroshilov. Tukhachevsky's “megalomaniacal” ambition and embittered opposition to Voroshilov was a dangerous combination that, in the eyes of the leadership, made him a likely candidate to sow discord or perhaps even organize a coup during this period of instability, if circumstances enabled it (Kotkin, 2014; Minakov, 2016).

Historian Robert Thurston (1996) writes, “with some justification, Stalin saw dangerous opposition developing around him”  and that “various sources point to a plot in the army.” Drawing on the émigré collections of the Hoover institution,  he presents often-neglected archival evidence that reveals knowledge of an alleged anti-Stalin plot amongst a number of ex-Soviet officials. B.A Almazov, an ex-NKVD officer, and A.V Likhachev, a Red Army Officer, for instance, revealed extensive details about a supposed military plot which they had caught wind of. Almazov reports the conspirators discussed using  “several army units and political prisoners” to strike against the central leadership. Likhachev claimed that he himself was not involved in any conspiracy but was aware of many other military officials involved in some form of plot connected to Tukhachevsky. Thurston notes that Likhachev’s recollection is, in part, corroborated in the account of another ex-Soviet officer whose brother described being  involved in a subversive group in similar terms. These are just a few examples of many similar reports. We cannot ascertain the veracity of all these stories, but the fact that we have many reports outlining very similar narratives suggests, according to Thurston, that there was likely something afoot. On this note, Peter Whitewood emphasizes that rumours of the High Command’s “Bonapartism” and secretive conspiracies were rampant throughout the army:

In particular, the apex of the Red Army high command was subject to widespread rumors in the early 1920s that several senior officers were disloyal and ready to betray the regime. The most common rumor described a supposed Russian Bonaparte in the high command who would overthrow the Bolsheviks (Whitewood, 2015, p.54)

The proliferation of reports, rumours, and stories describing an active conspiracy likely, in part, stemmed from the very real power struggles playing out within the military elite, divisions which were deepened by Tukhachevsky’s reputation as a Bonapartist. It is probable that these twin factors reinforced one another and generated conspiratorial contemplations and hushed discussions throughout the Red Army. Whitewood writes:

Indeed, it is likely that the division in the high command between Tukhachevskii and Voroshilov had filtered down the ranks and was known to the wider army. The hostility between the two men was no doubt common knowledge. There were … officers like [Gaia] Gai who would have preferred Tukhachevskii at the head of the Red Army rather than Voroshilov.

Gaia Gai was a former Trotskyist officer who had once accused Voroshilov of holding back his career, and expressed support for a Tukhachevsky leadership. As stated by Whitewood, it is clear that this was not an uncommon sentiment in the Red Army, as a number of officers and soldiers would have preferred Tukhachevsky over Voroshilov. These steep political divisions in the leadership produced disunity in the rank-and-file which had implications for the effectiveness of the Red Army.

Additionally, these soldiers critical of Voroshilov provided Tukhachevsky (or another possible anti-Stalin candidate) a potential power base in the event that he or his allies decided to seize control of the military apparatus. As in the case of Bukharin’s missed opportunity in the 1920s, disaffected soldiers posed a major threat to the stability of the state, especially one whose military elite was riven with internal conflict. The Russian historian Yulia Kantor (2005) also notes that the charismatic Tukhachevsky was uniquely talented in being able to group like-minded individuals together, as he had skillfully consolidated an informal faction in the military elite. Minakov (2016), too, describes how Tukhachevsky continually attempted to cultivate the size and influence of his group by actively trying to win over prominent Soviet officials to “his side,” as seen in his arranging of a secret meeting with Frinovsky, a high level Chekist, and his attempts to curry favour with prominent military leaders such as Voroshilov’s deputy Yakov Alksnis and the People's Commissar for the Navy, V.M. Orlov. Tukhachevsky sought the support of prominent officers outside his core group of allies to bolster the strength of his position within the military-elite and weaken the influence of his rivals. This maneuvering was closely documented by the secret police and only intensified their belief in Tukhachevsky’s perceived conspiratorial ambitions:

All the … conversations of Tukhachevsky … his friendly pat on the shoulder of the top commanders of the Red Army and deputy people's commissars only increased suspicions and strengthened the conviction that the marshal was plotting something extremely dangerous for the government. He was seen as unreliable. (Minakov, 2016, p. 469)

Additionally, Kantor (2005, p. 295) notes how Stalin “saw Tukhachevskii as an enemy of his system,” and further characterizes Tukhachevsky as an “unquestionably ambitious” individual whose loyalty was tentative, but never firm. The plethora of existing suspicions surrounding Tukhachevsky confirmed and legitimized the decision to remove what was perceived as a ticking time bomb. What is telling is that the moderate Shaposhnikov, Tukhachevsky’s replacement, ended up implementing several of the same policies of centralization that Tukhachevsky advocated for; the difference being that he was far less unpredictable, and oppositional—he was, in other words, reliable (Whitewood, 2015). Shaposhnikov, like Zhukov, and other high-ranking capable officers, survived the Red Army Purges.

Stalin arguably waited so long to move against Tukhachevsky only because he understood how invaluable he was as a general, but eventually the risks of his poor reputation and personal ambitions outweighed the benefit of his counsel, especially as the international situation intensified. While the charges of a Nazi-fascist plot are not convincing, there is a tendency to overcorrect by neglecting to factor in how internal power-struggles, and the risks they posed to the unity of the war effort sparked the destruction of the high command. At one point, Tukhachevsky himself observed that “If enemies learn about the situation, they may want to attempt something,” (Kotkin, 2014, p. 577). A more tempered and subservient Tukhachevsky may have lived, but this was not in his nature. He had little interest in being subservient to the military vision of someone else; and unfortunately for him, Stalin felt the same. And while Tukhachevsky was undeniably brilliant as a military theoretician, Stalin was no amateur. An astute military thinker himself, Stalin immersed himself in the study of military history, strategy and warfare, as evidenced by the contents of his own personal library and the various war-leaders and diplomats who had went on to comment on his exceptional military brain after the war (Read, 2016; Rieber, 2022). Tukhachevsky’s pursuit of hegemony over the Red Army is something Stalin would have never been willing to concede.

Tukhachevsky’s death was less about any kind of organized, imminent plan to oust Stalin and more about the real possibility of a coup foreshadowed in his bitter struggle with Stalin’s men for supremacy over the military apparatus and the disunity this produced in the Red Army; in this sense, it was preventative. Stalin desperately sought to tear out the roots of conspiracy and, for him, this meant purging the party of existing oppositional elements. Tukhachevsky’s tenuous loyalty was also known amongst prominent Party members. The Historian Charters Wynn (2008) writes that there is credible historical evidence to suggest there were serious discussions around soliciting Tukhachevsky’s participation in an attempt to replace Stalin. Wynn refers to a conversation at an informal gathering in which a state informant was involved. Whitewood and Minakov also make note of the same conversation with interest:

The Politburo and CCC Presidium members certainly spoke at the November 27, 1932 session as if they believed the testimonies. Indeed the testimony regarding what was said at the social gatherings generally does seem convincing. It seems clear that a number of people did discuss the possibility of replacing Stalin (Wynn, 2008. p. 101)

In Poponin’s account of the group’s discussion, for instance, he remarked that Eismont had asked about Tukhachevskii’s mood. Apparently this had been during a conversation between Poponin and Eismont concerning where the regime could find support if war and peasant rebellion were to break out. Asking about Tukhachevskii’s mood in this way suggested that Eismont believed his loyalty was not guaranteed (Whitewood, 2015, p. 75)

the name of Tukhachevsky inevitably surfaced and only his. They saw him as a potential conspirator ready to join any opposition … an individual who, although not yet involved in a conspiracy, would happily join one (Minakov, 2016, p. 287)

Chris Bellamy (2020) describes a moment in the aftermath of the German invasion of Barbarossa when Stalin was suddenly called to a meeting that afternoon with Mikoian, Voznesenskii, Beria, and Malenkov. The ominous gathering of Soviet elites reeked of a coup attempt and Bellamy notes that this would have been a likely time for a forced leadership change given Stalin’s failure to heed the signs of the Nazi invasion. Stalin braced himself for the inevitable betrayal of his loyalists, but was astonished to instead see his entourage invite him to take the role of Chairman of the Defense Committee, which would see him lead the war effort. “Very well,” he responded (Bellamy, 2020, p. 75)

Christopher Read (2016) observes that in this crisis Stalin was a breadth away from being arrested, potentially facing the wrath of Terror which he himself had presided over the last several years. Luckily for Stalin, the inner-circle he cultivated was too loyal to exploit this moment of vulnerability. The aftermath of the Nazi invasion would have likely transpired very differently if a thinly veiled opposition group existed at the time. Minakov (2016, p. 483) writes that a hypothetical clash between Stalin and Tukhachevsky during a crisis of this kind would have been “a devastating blow to the defense capability of the USSR, with consequences whose severity and magnitude are difficult to measure and predict.” Indeed, it may have been the opportune time to actualize Tukhachevsky’s so-called “Plan of Defeat.” In this sense, Stalin’s decision to move against Tukhachevsky cannot be reduced to a paranoid and self-destructive implosion, but demonstrated, to some extent, a certain kind of rationality. Roberts (2006, p. 161) describes how “inviolable structures of loyalty” were the bedrock of Stalin’s military leadership. The tightly-knit inner-circle of the Red Army’s leadership was bound by a deep mutual trust and respect; informal factions, oppositional groupings, deep strategic divisions, and lone wolves were inimical to the highly unified military leadership that Stalin (violently) cultivated and saw as necessary for fighting a successful war. That there was merit to this form of military organization cannot be denied, as this was the same leadership that went on to lead the Red Army to some of the greatest military victories in modern history (Roberts, 2006).

Ultimately, peasant unrest, military disunity, and international uncertainty would have raised the prospect of a leadership change for those unhappy with the heavy-handed direction of the Stalinist government, and Tukhachevsky was widely perceived as the prime candidate to further these ends. The doomed officer’s opposition against Stalin loyalists in the military elite only confirmed the heightened suspicions of the leadership. Tukhachevsky’s destruction had serious costs, but it also removed serious risks, as his unreliability was seen as a threat to the Soviet war effort, a fear that was not without merit. For Stalin, that was enough.

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