Mikhail Tukhachevsky

Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky served as an officer in World War I, then rose through the Russian Civil War commanding the defense of Moscow in 1918, forces on the Eastern Front, and the Fifth Army in the recapture of Siberia from Alexander Kolchak. In 1920–1921 he led the Soviet Western Front in the Polish–Soviet War, driving Polish forces back before suffering defeat outside Warsaw — a loss he blamed on Joseph Stalin. He became Chief of Staff of the Red Army from 1925 to 1928 and achieved the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1935. As a theoretician he drove Soviet development of dee…