Mikhail Tukhachevsky
Channel: the aleatoric learning channel
Date: 2021-10-19

Soviet authorities accused Tukhachevsky of treason, and after confessing he was executed in 1937 during Stalin's military purges of 1936-1938. " Tukhachevsky's apparent neo-paganism was also corroborated by another prisoner at Ingolstadt, Nikolay Alexandrovich Tsurikov, who recalled that he once saw a "scarecrow" in the corner of Tukhachevsky's cell, and upon asking him as to what it was, Tukhachevsky responded, that it was an effigy of Yarilo, which he had created during Shrovetide. According to Tukhachevsky's close confidant Leonid Sabaneyev, in 1918, when he was in the service of the Military Department of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, in his last overt display of neopaganism, Tukhachevsky drew up a project for destruction of Christianity and restoration of Slavic paganism. "According to Montefiore, a few days later, as Nikolai Yezhov buzzed in and out of Stalin's office, a broken Tukhachevsky confessed that Avel Yenukidze had recruited him in 1928 and that he was a German agent in cahoots with Nikolai Bukharin to seize power. Tukhachevsky's confession, which survives in the archives, is dappled with a brown spray that was later found to be blood-spattered by a body in motion. Stalin commented,"It's incredible, but it's a fact, they admit it. "On June 11, 1937, the Soviet Supreme Court convened a special military tribunal to try Tukhachevsky and eight Generals for treason. The trial was dubbed the Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization. Upon hearing the accusations, Tukhachevsky was heard to say,"I feel I'm dreaming. "Within the hour, Tukhachevsky was summoned from his cell by NKVD captain Vasili Blokhin. As Yezhov watched, the former Marshal was shot once in the back of the head.Immediately afterward, Yezhov was summoned into Stalin's presence. Stalin asked,"What were Tukhachevsky's last words?" Yezhov responded, "The snake said he was dedicated to the Motherland and Comrade Stalin. Conquest's thesis of an SS conspiracy to frame Tukhachevsky was based upon the memoirs of Walter Schellenberg and Beneš.In 1989, the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union announced that new evidence had been found in Stalin's archives indicating German intelligence's intentions to fabricate disinformation about Tukhachevsky with the goal of eliminating him. At Yezhov's order, the NKVD had instructed a known double agent, Nikolai Skoblin, to leak to Heydrich's Sicherheitsdienst concocted information suggesting a plot by Tukhachevsky and the other Soviet generals against Stalin. Montefiore, who has conducted extensive research in Soviet archives, states: Stalin needed neither Nazi disinformation nor mysterious Okhrana files to persuade him to destroy Tukhachevsky. Ultimately, five of the eight generals who presided over Tukhachevsky's "trial" were arrested and shot by the NKVD.According to Montefiore, Stalin's close friend and confidant Kaganovich later joked, "Tukhachevsky hid Napoleon's baton in his rucksack.