Tukhachevsky, Mikhayl

Tukhachevsky, Mikhayl (Nikolayevich)

(born Feb. 16, 1893, near Slednevo, Russia—died June 11, 1937) Soviet Red Army officer. In the Russian Civil War, he commanded the recapture of Siberia from Aleksandr Kolchak and led the Cossack forces against Anton Denikin (1920). He thereafter played a leading role in military reform; from 1931 he directed the rearmament of the Soviet Union. He served as Soviet chief of staff (1925–28) and later as deputy commissar for defense (1931–37); he was made a marshal of the Soviet Union in 1935. A victim of the purge trials in 1937, he was tried and executed with other top Red Army commanders. In 1988 he was cleared judicially and rehabilitated by official decree.