In 1936 Stalin began the "set up" of the notorious Moscow. These trials resulted in the death or imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of people. One of those who lost their lives was the best Soviet soldier of the time, Marshal Mikhail Tukhashevsky.
Tukhasevsky fell victim to German-made "proofs of their betrayal", which were passed to Stalin through Reinhard Heydrich, head of the SD intelligence service at the time. Heydrich made use of many documents, which came into his possession from Paris through a certain General Sklobin, a double agent and veteran of the former White Army.
These forged documents, incriminating the Red Army reorganizer Marshal Tukhasevsky, were somehow channeled to the Czechoslovak president Eduard Benes and through him to Stalin. The origin of these documents was not unknown to the Soviet leader, who even paid Heydrich three million rubles, through an agent in the USSR embassy in Berlin.
Payment was made in "heavy" banknotes, the serial numbers of which the Soviets had apparently recorded. So when, later, German agents tried to use these notes in the USSR, they were immediately arrested.
Thanks to the documents of Sklobin and Heydrich, Stalin began the numerous trials of his officers in order to suppress any dissent within the Red Army. Stalin and Tukhashevsky actually hated each other for a long time as, from late 1935, the party's relations with the Red Army steadily deteriorated.
Russia was shaking Stalin. The ruthless GPU sent millions of Russians to forced labor camps. The canals that connected the White Sea with the Baltic - 225 km long - the Moscow-Volga canal and other large technical projects were implemented by hundreds of thousands of convicts.
Tukhashevsky came from a petty-bourgeois family from the Smolensk region and was a former officer of the famous Semenovsky Tsarist Guards Regiment. He had joined the Reds in 1918. He was undoubtedly more popular than Stalin, who was ridiculed when he tried to present the general outside Warsaw in 1920. With great effort, Tukhashevsky then succeeded in saving several units of the routed Red Army.
Russia was shaking Stalin. The ruthless GPU sent millions of Russians to forced labor camps. The canals that connected the White Sea with the Baltic - 225 km long - the Moscow-Volga canal and other large technical projects were implemented by hundreds of thousands of convicts.
Tukhashevsky came from a petty-bourgeois family from the Smolensk region and was a former officer of the famous Semenovsky Tsarist Guards Regiment. He had joined the Reds in 1918. He was undoubtedly more popular than Stalin, who was ridiculed when he tried to present the general outside Warsaw in 1920. With great effort, Tukhashevsky then succeeded in saving several units of the routed Red Army.
Stalin never forgave him for this. In 1936 he knew that the majority of officers, especially the higher ranks, were hostile to the Communist Party. The forged documents he received from Prague allowed him to crush his enemies within the Red Army. Marshals Tukhashevaski, Yegorov and Blicher, together with 75 of the 80 generals, members of the Supreme Defense Council, were shot.
Of the 15 army commanders, 13 were removed, as were 367 other generals. More than 32,000 Red Army officers were executed between May 1937 and February 1938.