According to a popular myth, Stalin ordered his political police to assemble a dossier of fabricated evidence - details of ‘counterrevolutionary’ activity and espionage for Germany. (Image source: WikiCommons) The myth of faked evidenceįor decades, the ‘Tukhachevsky Affair’ was recognized as the start of the Red Army purge. Only two of these five top-level commanders were alive by 1938. Mikhail Tukhachevsky (left) and the marshals of the Red Army in 1935. Below are five important points surrounding the Red Army purge. Stalin’s decimation of the armed forces was a defining moment of the Great Terror, the ruthless campaign of mass arrests, secret trials and executions that hit every sphere of Soviet society - it is also one of the most misunderstood. Nevertheless, the purge continued into 1938 and cost the Red Army dearly. The Soviet secret police had beaten confessions from all of those implicated, yet there was no German-inspired conspiracy in the Soviet military. In reality the Tukhachevsky group was innocent of treason.
Regardless of his loyalty to Stalin and the Soviet Union, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky was arrested and shot for treason. The execution of what became known as the ‘military-fascist plotters’ sparked a massive military purge and accompanying wave of arrests as Stalin’s paranoid regime sought to cleanse the ranks of anyone associated with the supposed conspirators. ON JUNE 11, 1937, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and a group of senior officers from the Soviet high command were found guilty at a closed trial of coordinating a German-funded military plot inside the Red Army. Nevertheless, the purge continued into 1938 and cost the Red Army dearly.” But did it really? (Image source: WikiCommons) “There was no German-inspired conspiracy in the Soviet military. History remembers that the 1937-8 purge of the Red Army left the Soviet Union weakened on the eve of the Second Worlds War.
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