Appendix 1 Historiographical Notes on Tukhachevskii in the Early 1930S

Appendix 1 Historiographical Notes on Tukhachevskii In the early 1930s Until his rehabilitation in 1957, the literature on Tukhachevskii in general emanated from the 1920s and 1930s. 1 Except for the defector agent Walter Krivitsky's testimony on the Tukhachcvskii 'affair', the possible Gcrman NKVD plot had been treated only in a few post-World War Two memoir articles by German officers. 2 In 1957, a military collegium led by B. Viktorov scrutinised the grounds for Tukhachevskii's arrest, interrogation and trial in May-June 1937. They produced a host of new data on the inner mecha nisms of the repression in the Red Army.3 In the early 1960s, a few survivors of the purges in the Red Army pub lished their memoirs and biographical sketches of Tukhachcvskii. General A. I. Todorskii established a table on the most famous commanders de stroyed in 1936-8. He also wrote a short biography of Tukhachevskii.4 A major source for the historiography was General G. S. lsserson's memoirs, in which he wrote on Tukhachevskii's 1928 and 1930 proposals for re structuring the Soviet armed forces. 5 Another secondary source was Marshal S. Biriuzov's introductory essay to Tukhachevskii's Selected works (Izbrannye proizvedeniia ). 6 It is clear that this historiography was in its own way biased. The most evident reason for this was that when Isscrson's and Biriuzov's articles were published, the XXII Congress of the Communist Party had strongly condemned the crimes and repression during Stalin's reign, and impli cated Voroshilov as culpable in the execution of the High Command of the Red Army in 1937-8. Tukhachevskii and the other marshals executed after a show trial in 1937 had been rehabilitated during Khrushchev's first de-Stalinisation campaign. When describing the development of the Red Army in the inter-war period and in the initial phase of the Great Patri otic War in 1941, Soviet historians had a tendency to embellish the accomplishments of Tukhachcvskii. However, the exact nature of his pro posals, like the above-mentioned January 1930 memo, were glossed over. Even in a recent biography of Tukhachevskii, Valentin Ivanov wrote that the figures were 'absolutely well-founded indicators for the development of the artillery, armoured and tank forces and aviation'. Despite the fact that Tukhachevskii claimed that his targets were for the end of the first five-year plan, that is, for 1933, Ivanov states that Tukhachcvskii, with great prescience, foresaw the probable magnitude of future conflicts in general. 206 Appendix I 207 Ten years before the Second World War, Tukhachevskii could exactly envision those strategic operations that would eventually take place m 1939-1945.7 Soviet historiography has tended to blur Tukhachevskii's time perspec tive. It is worthwhile to note that his schedule definitely referred to the military industrial capacity in the immediate future: Though I cannot specify the time and sequence for this reorganisation, I believe that it without any doubt conforms to the production capacity of the five-year plan.0 However, no Soviet historian has studied how Voroshilov, Shaposhnikov and Stalin in 1930-1 handled the various proposals by Tukhachevskii. Most significant is that the superficial and biased analysis undertaken by Shaposhnikov has not been mentioned previously. Besides this historio graphical aspect, one important moment in the dispute over Tukhachevskii's proposals is that a radically different perspective was introduced in the debate. Tukhachevskii as well as Snitko implied a qualitative leap in the development of the Soviet armed forces. At a time when the range for strategic planning still seemed to allow for such drastic transformations, their thinking eventually found another resonance in the circle around Stalin. When other officials took into account the various ideas launched by Tukhachevskii, matters were settled quite swiftly. Boris Shaposhnikov, the old 'military specialist', who for unknown reasons had hastened to join the Communist Party in autumn 1930, was dismissed from the Staff. In June 1931, Tukhachevskii was promoted to Deputy People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs and to Chief of Armaments. This co-ordinating post had been instituted in 1929, and first occupied by Uborevich, who was now appointed head of the Belorussian Military District. In April 1931, Shaposhnikov was appointed Commander of the Volga Region Military District, and Egorov - Chief of the Red Army Staff. One year later, Shaposhnikov was transferred to lead the Frunze Military Acad emy. In September 1935, he was appointed Commander of the Leningrad Military District. When the purges started in 1937, he was appointed Chief of the General Staff once again, only to be dismissed in August 1940, as a consequence of the Soviet-Finnish War. When Zhukov resigned as Chief of Staff in July 1941, Shaposhnikov for the last time took up the respon sibility as Head of the General Staff. Tukhachevskii, Triandafillov, Khalepskii, Zhigur and several other 'modernisers' could now work in close tandem on developing the strate gic doctrine and on testing new weapons like tanks, fighter, bomber and transport aircraft, chemical weapons and experimental techniques. In this book some of the results of these strivings have been examined. The mobilisation preparedness of industry was taken as a crucial point for judging the success of the rearmament 'in depth'. Another historical assumption gets new light from the archival findings discussed above. It has been asserted that Stalin started to plot against 208 Appendix I Tukhachevskii in 1930. However, evidence to that effect is lacking, bar ring the hearsay that was 'reproduced' during the thaw under Khrushchev. On the contrary, the archival findings indicate that Stalin at that time trusted Tukhachevskii as a military planner. Precisely when this dispute raged over the modernisation of the army in summer 1930, Tukhachevskii was commissioned by Stalin to draft a new war plan against Poland. De spite their disagreement on the historical questions and the rearmament process, Stalin endorsed Tukhachevskii to develop the new concept of 'deep operations' in the most important part of the Soviet war planning. This war plan, which Tukhachcvskii eventually completed and proposed in 1932, included air assault strikes against the rear of a Polish army still in mobilisation, tank operations at the border and heavy bomber strikes against Warsaw.9 It is outside the scope of this study to analyse the events that led to the trial and execution of Tukhachevskii in 1937 (were there actually forged Nazi documents, purportedly showing Tukhachevskii collaborating with German officers? By whom were the documents transferred to Moscow? and so on). 111 A common interpretation of the persecution of the Red Army generals in 1937 claims that Stalin detested Tukhachevskii ever since his fateful refusal to support the offensive on Warsaw during the Soviet Polish war in 1920, and that Stalin had initiated a conspiracy against Tukhachevskii already in 1930. Judging by how they worked in tandem during 1931 and later in the industrial restructuring, however, this expla nation needs more factual support. The long letter - reproduced in this book pp. 141-3 - in which Stalin in 1932 apologised to Tukhachevskii certainly casts doubt on this thesis. There probably did exist personal rancour between Boris Shaposhnikov and Mikhail Tukhachevskii. In 1923, Shaposhnikov had examined the Soviet Polish war 1920 in a way that was biased in favour of the Stalin-Budionnyi Voroshilov camp, and clearly hostile to Tukhachevskii's way of handling the logistics of the campaign against Warsaw. 11 One of the main participants of the Soviet-Polish War was Alexander Egorov. In 1920, he was Commander of the Southwestern Front, which with Budionnyi's First Cavalry Army tried to capture L:vov. They had disregarded orders in early August to shift direction, and to support Tukhachevskii's Western Army towards Warsaw. In 1928, Egorov drafted his book on these events: L 'vov-Warsaw: Interaction between army groups. Defence Commissar Voroshilov wrote and warned Egorov not to polemise too much against Triandafillov, Tukhachcvskii and others over the Soviet Polish war. The following passage shows Voroshilov as still very independent in his judgements: It seems necessary, however, to bring your attention to one circumstance. We should not forget that you and I cannot be sharp and objective historians, since we directly took part in the events, and furthermore we are also at present active leading military officials. For this reason I consider that in historical works one should be extremely carcful. 12 Appendix 1 209 Within a year, Voroshilov had forgotten his own recommendations to Egorov. In a laudatory article for Stalin's 50th anniversary, 'Stalin and the Red Army', Voroshilov initiated the falsifications about Stalin's activi ties in the Civil War period. 13 If mutual distrust between Tukhachevskii and Stalin over the fate of the Soviet-Polish war had actually been such a sore point between them, it seems difficult to explain why Tukhachevskii, in January 1932, would turn to Stalin, asking him to intervene in the affairs of the Military Acad emy. Tukhachevskii noted that Vladimir Melikov's books 'The War against White Poland' (Voina s bclopoliakami, 1925) and 'Marna-Vistula-Smirna' ( 1928) contained a reasoned criticism of the Western Front Command in 1920. However, Tukhachevskii still objected to Melikov's 'pessimistic con clusions regard the possible offensive on foreign territories'. But in the Academy's official guidelines for the war with Poland, he considered him self to be outrightly discredited. In a letter addressed to 'Respected Comrade Stalin', Tukhachevskii noted that the lectures by Melikov at the Academy depicted him as 'an amateur of unsupported offensives' and as setting up 'fantastic plans'. In the lec tures, Tukhachevskii emphasised, Melikov was even more outspoken and described his leadership as 'adventurist', 'foolish' and 'criminal'.

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