On June 11, 1937, by order of Joseph Stalin, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and seven other senior military officers were sentenced to death They were convicted on fabricated charges of anti-Soviet activity.
The case against Tukhachevsky is part of the process of beheading the Red Army,
part of Stalin's terror against society in the USSR.
The Great Purge or "The Great Terror" are political repressions and persecutions in the Soviet Union directed by Joseph Stalin in the 1930s in order to consolidate his rule in the Soviet Union, centralize power, and eliminate all possible resistance to power, whether real or one is simulated.
Some authors describe these repressions as the “Soviet Holocaust”. In Russian historiography, the period of the most intense purges (1937-1938) is called Ezhovshchyna after Nikolai Ezhov, head of the Soviet secret police — NKVD.
The secret order of the NKVD under number 00447 of July 30, 1937 defines the “limit of terror", i.e. the total number of those scheduled for arrest in all regions, divided into different categories. “First category“ included persons who should have been shot immediately. In “Second category“ include persons who were scheduled to be sentenced to a long term and sent to the camps.
The Great Terror takes 3 million direct victims, i.e. through the so-called “rapid extermination of suspects", and another 7.5 million people died in the Gulag.
State terrorism mostly targets political and military leaders.
Red Army generals were killed, writers, artists and scientists were victims of the purges, along with ordinary citizens suspected of questioning Stalin's rule.
If until 1937 the repressions affected individual groups and social circles, then the whole society became the subject of terror.
During the 470-day period of the Great Terror in the USSR, 1,600 people were shot a day, making an average of one person per minute. The shootings continued for 15 months and 12 days, without a “day off”, day and night. This is written by Tomas Kizhni – a photographer and journalist who has been working for years on an album about one of the most brutal Stalinist crimes.
Who is Marshal Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky?
He is the son of a hereditary nobleman and a peasant woman, a Guards officer, who received five military awards on the fronts of the First World War, escaped from German captivity on his fifth attempt, switched unconditionally to the side of the Bolsheviks.
Fought their enemies during the Civil War.
It is called “the red Napoleon” and creator of Soviet military doctrine.
In 1921, Tukhachevsky distinguished himself with particular cruelty in suppressing the rebellion of Russian sailors in Kronstadt, but especially in suppressing the peasant uprisings against the Bolshevik regime in the Tambov region.
At that time, the communist bandits began to confiscate all the produce of the peasants and a mass famine occurred in Russia.
All over the Tambov region, the peasants rise up in revolt and many of them become partisans to resist the lazy and thieving communist scum.
In response, Tukhachevsky brought units of the Red Army into the villages, set them on fire, and in order to prevent support for the partisans and to terrorize the people, he ordered that 100 people be shot in each village.
In order to save ammunition in many of the villages, he released war poisonous gases, which killed the entire population, including minor children and their mothers.
This cruelty made an impression on the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, and at the end of 1921 Tukhachevsky was appointed head of the Military Academy of the Red Army.
Hitler is aware that in 1933 he won the election thanks to Stalin ordering the German communists to withdraw their support for the powerful socialist movement and thus the left in Germany lost the election and Hitler won a majority.
A little later, German military intelligence sent a signal to Stalin that Marshal Tukhachevsky was plotting against Stalin.
Stalin himself was aware that this was not true, but he used the situation to start a mass purge.
The rest is known in May 1937, Marshal Tukhachevsky was arrested.
He was taken to Moscow, where in just two weeks he made a "full confession". A "trial" was held, a single one and without the right of appeal, he was sentenced to death and shot on the same day.
30,000 more Red Army officers would follow his fate in 1937 and 1938
In 460 days, 90% of marshals and generals and 80% of colonels are " condemned" to death and were shot after torture and confessions.