Forging Stalin's Army

Forging Stalin's Army

Marshal Tukhachevsky
and the
Politics of Military Innovation

Sally W. Stoecker

Foreword by David Glantz

First published 1998 by Westview Press

Published 2018 by Routledge

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To F re d a n d C aro lyn
 Contents

Tables and Figures X

Foreword xi
Acknowledgm ents xiii

1 Introduction: The C ontext for Innovation in S talin's A rm y 1

Totalitarianism and the Red Army, 2

Innovation in the Interw ar Years, 8
Was the Red Arm y a Traditional Bureaucracy?, 11
The Lessons of the Great War, 12
Civilian Participation or Intervention?, 14
M otives and O pportunities for Innovation During
the First Five Year Plan, 17
Notes, 22

2 Politics a n d M ilitary Priorities: B uilding a Case for

M ore R esources 31

Security and the Goals of the First Five Year Plan, 33

Voroshilov: Criticism of the Party, 36
M arshal Tukhachevsky: Optim ism for Industrialization, 40
A Controversial Rearm am ent Proposal, 41
The Red Arm y's M anipulation of the "W ar Scare", 45
Conclusions, 48
Notes, 51

3 The Im pact of the Far East T hreats and E ncounters

on Innovation 59

The Chinese Eastern Railway Conflict as Propaganda

Tool, 60
Party Docum ents Reflect New Concerns for Far East, 64
M ilitary Encounters in the Far East, 65
Notes, 71
vii
v iii Contents

The C landestine C ollaboration Betw een the R eichsw ehr

a n d the Red A rm y

The Background and Context of the Secret Collaboration, 78

Air Force Doctrine and Theory, 84
Tank Doctrine and Theory, 88
Chemical Doctrine and Theory, 91
Lipetsk, Tomka, and Kama: W eapons Development, Testing,
and Tactical Training, 94
Im pedim ents to Interpreting Influence: A Closer Look, 101
Conclusions, 104
Notes, 105

The A cquisition an d A d ap tatio n of Foreign M odels

The Case of T ank D evelopm ent

The Birth of Research and Developm ent Bureaus, 118

Ostekhbiuro: W here Civil and M ilitary Goals
O verlapped, 119
The Acquisition and A lteration of British and American
Tanks, 120
Excursus: Soviet Design Analyses of Germ an Tank
M odels, 123
Indigenous Tank Program s and Prototypes: Dyrenkov
and Grotto, 124
Conclusions, 127
Notes, 128

M arshal Tukhachevsky: E nigm atic M ilitary E ntrep ren eu r

Tukhachevsky as Public Entrepreneur, 136

Skillfully Exploiting Contradictions, 141
Stalinist Ideology and the RKKA, 143
Form ulating a Vision of Future War, 148
The N ature of a Coalition W ar, 149
Im perialist Intentions and V ariants of Future W ar, 150
Leningrad as Laboratory: The "Deep Battle" Emerges, 153
The E ntrepreneur Ascendant: Tukhachevsky as Chief
of Arm am ents, 157
Contents ix

An Entrepreneurial Excursus: Tukhachevsky Gives Substance

to Stalin's Vision of Civil Aviation, or "15,000 Tons
by 1932?", 159
Personalities, Politics, and the Public Entrepreneur, 162
Conclusions, 168
Notes, 170

7 P ostscript: Yezhovshchina an d the E nd of Innovation 181

Tukhachevsky's Demise, 182

W ho Fram ed M arshal Tukhachevsky?, 183
Notes, 186

8 C oncluding Rem arks 189

Acronym s 195
Selected Bibliography 197
Index 205
 Tables and Figures

Tables

2.1 W eapons Procurem ent, 1932/1933 42

4.1 Russians in Germ any 85
6.1 G roupings of States Hostile and Friendly Tow ard USSR 151

Figures

2.1 Versions of the Defense Five Year Plan 35

2.2 C ountries' M ilitary Budgets in 1931 37
2.3 Soviet M ilitary Budget Increases as Percentages of
General Increases 38

X
 Forew ord

Like his fam ous W orld W ar II counterpart, m arshal of the Soviet

Union G. K. Zhukov, the figure of Mikhail Tukhachevsky stands like a
colossus in the pages of Soviet m ilitary history. While even those who
know little about the history of the Red Army and the Soviet state have
likely heard of these two prom inent figures, their experiences and
accom plishm ents also dom inate the historical m em ory of those m ost
knowledgeable in the field. In fact, both Zhukov and Tukhachevsky
have become virtual cult figures in the Russian Federation, adding light
and a m easure of glam our to w hat otherwise seems to have been a
depressing and failed historical epoch.
Zhukov's rise to fame is understandable. Painted as the victor of
the Soviet's "Great Patriotic War" by form er Soviet and present Russian
historians, Zhukov's reputation grew on the basis of his own mem oirs
and the m agnificent feats that Soviet historiography ascribed to him.
Only now are we learning that Zhukov, too, as all fam ous men, was
hum an and shared basic hum an flaws.
In Tukhachevsky's case, fame w as m ore fleeting. Well know n in the
W est in the 1920s and 1930s, after his sum m ary execution in 1937, this
prem ier victim of Stalin's purges became a nonperson in the Soviet
Union and but a faint m em ory in the West. His rehabilitation as a
preem inent historical figure began in the 1960s, after the death of his
nemesis Stalin, and culm inated in the 1980s w hen Tukhachevsky
em erged as a new star in an otherwise bleak Soviet era. As in the case
of Zhukov, Tukhachevsky's recent notoriety is based upon a curious
m ixture of a lim ited selection of his own writings, the often politically
correct accounts of Soviet authors, and the laudatory w ritings of a
lim ited circle of W estern historians. Given the frail and often suspect
historical basis for the fame of both figures and the recently im proved
access to Soviet archives, history dem ands that both m en's reputations
be reassessed. This volume begins that critical process.
Sally W. Stoecker provides a comprehensive and fresh view of the
developm ent of the pre-W orld W ar II Red Army based on "state-of-the-
art" Soviet archival materials. She examines in detail the causes, nature,
and consequences of m ilitary innovation by quite naturally
xi
x ii F o re w o rd

concentrating on the period from 1928 through 1933, w hen m uch of that
innovation took place. H er critique and qualification of the "totalitarian"
m odel of political developm ent, once dom inant in W estern
understanding of Stalin's Soviet Union, are refreshing and capture the
complexities of interw ar Soviet m ilitary developm ent, w hich m any
m ilitary historians have overlooked. While questioning Soviet
adherence to the "totalitarian" m odel in the late 1920s and early 1930s,
she also vividly dem onstrates how the return to that m odel by Stalin in
the terrible late 1930s had disastrous consequences for the Soviet
m ilitary and state.
Sally's fresh interpretive approach exploits copious am ounts of
fresh archival m aterials to define and explain the critical process of
m ilitary innovation, thereby updating John Erickson's now classic view
of the Red Army's prew ar experiences, The Soviet H igh Command.
This book also adds vital archival detail to such forgotten or
m isunderstood events as the 1929 Sino-Soviet conflict in the Far East,
w hich provided context for the Tukhachevsky reforms. Of particular
value is Sally's extensive use of (and quotes from) Tukhachevsky's long
secret and unavailable seminal five-volume study, Future War, which,
until recently, historians have know n existed but have not seen.
Furtherm ore, she details the nature and scope of foreign assistance to
the Soviet Union and cross-fertilization of ideas betw een Germ any and
the Soviet Union during the interw ar period. While doing so, she lays
to rest some of the m ost flagrant m isinterpretations and
m isunderstandings dom inant in W estern historiography.
This book thus epitom izes the fresh scholarship we can expect to
continue in the realm of Soviet m ilitary affairs. Sally has pioneered the
path that other scholars can exploit and build upon as they search for
the real Mikhail Nikolaevich Tukhachevsky.

D avidM . G lantz
Carlisle, PA
 A cknow ledgm ents

The idea for this study can be traced to the advice and w orks of
three individuals: Edw ard L. W arner III, Bruce Parrott, and Kimberly
Zisk. Ted W arner, w ith w hom I had the pleasure of working at RAND
during the Cold W ar, often m ade reference to the interw ar period as
one needing m ore study. W hen it came time to decide on a thesis topic,
the Red Army of the 1920s seem ed a natural choice. Bruce Parrott, my
dissertation adviser at Johns Hopkins University (SAIS), urged me to
confine m y study of the Red Army to the First Five Year Plan period.
A lthough at first it seem ed too lim iting to devote an entire dissertation
to just five years, I soon grew to appreciate just how full and interesting
those years were w hen looked at from various angles: economic,
strategic, political, and technological. I collected an enorm ous am ount of
inform ation in the m ilitary archives in Germany and in Russia between
1990 and 1993 —thanks to support from the Fulbright Commission,
RAND, and the American Council of Teachers of Russian—but I was
still lacking a fram ew ork in which to incorporate it. Then, in the
sum m er of 1993, while reviewing a new book by Kimberly M arten Zisk
on innovation in the Soviet Army in the post-Stalin era, it occurred to
me that I too could attem pt to explain the process of m ilitary innovation
in the RKKA using an institutional fram ew ork and a discussion of
various sources of innovation.
This has been a lengthy but fascinating project in a variety of
intellectual and personal ways. First of all, I w ould like to thank Peter
Kracht, form erly of W estview Press, for his support and decision to
publish m y study. I am extremely grateful to m y advisers and reviewers
for their incisive comments, w hich collectively im proved this work:
Eliot Cohen, Julian Cooper, David Glantz, Jacob Kipp, Amy Knight,
Bruce Parrott, and Roger Reese. In particular, David Glantz and Amy
Knight offered me encouragem ent throughout the revision stage and
their support w as invaluable to the completion of this m anuscript.
David Bridges, m y research assistant at American University, deserves
"stormy applause" for researching and w riting about the historiography
of the "Tukhachevsky affair."

x iii
xiv Acknowledgm ents

Thanks are also due to colleagues who shared their materials and
thoughts with me along the way: Manfred von Boetticher, Jonathan
Bone, Willis Brooks, Stephen Brown, R. W. Davies, Bruce Menning,
Lennart Samuelson, Gottfried Schramm, David Stone, and Manfred
Zeidler.
Several individuals also w ent all out in helping me turn my thesis
into a book. Lori Kranz and Carla Astrab edited and form atted the
manuscript; Lesley Rimmel pored over photographs and posters of the
Red Army in the Hoover Archive at Stanford; and my brother, James
M anson Stoecker, designed the book's dust jacket.
Most important, however, has been the steadfast commitment and
good hum or of my husband, Fred Biery, and the inspirational smiles of
our precious daughter, Carolyn.
Sally W. Stoecker
Soviet leaders review the May Day parade on Red Square one m onth before
Tukhachevsky’s execution. Left to Right: J. V. Stalin, Κ. E. Voroshilov, V. K.
Molotov. Second row: L. M . Kaganovich, A. A. Andreev, and G . Dmitrev. May
14, 1937. Acme News Pictures, Inc.
Reprinted with permission o f Corbis-Bettm an, Inc.

Marshal Mikhail
Nikolaevich Tukhachevsky
(Courtesy o f the H oover
Institution Archives, Stanford
University)
 People’s commissar o f
military and naval affairs,
Kliment Voroshilov, observes
maneuvers from the command
post o f a coastal battery.
(Courtesy o f H oover Institution
Archives, Stanford University)

D eputy people’s commissar o f military and naval affairs, Jan Gamarnik,

speaking at a gathering o f R ed Navy officers and sailors.
(C ourtesy o f H oover Institution Archives, Stanford University)
“ H an d s O ffl”
(C ourtesy o f the Poster Collection, H oover Institution Archives)

“ The Defense o f the U S S R ”

(C ourtesy o f the Poster Collection,
H oover Institution Archives)
The last firing practice at the Kazan tank school is celebrated with
champagne by German and Soviet participants. A ugust 1933.
(Courtesy o f M anfred Zeidler.)

German officers cam ouflaged as civilians at the Kazan train station

prepare to return to Germany via Leningrad. Septem ber 1933.
(C ourtesy o f M anfred Zeidler)
 1
Introduction: The Context for
Innovation in Stalin's Arm y

The W orkers' and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA), established in 1918

and headed up by Lev Trotsky, w as handed a blank slate on which to
create a new arm y com prised of new soldiers who w ould serve the state
in a variety of new ways. The days of the bourgeois, professional arm y
were gone and the W orkers1and Peasants' Red Army w as just th a t—an
arm y whose composition reflected the society at large and w ould carry
out missions of both a civilian and a war-m aking nature. So "new" was
this organization that even the im portance of a m ilitary doctrine w as in
question and the pages of num erous m ilitary journals were filled w ith
debates on the structure, missions, and equipping of the new army.
U nder Stalin, the arm y's m andate for change and m odernization
continued w ith the help of a variety of very com petent m ilitary leaders,
especially the enigmatic reform er and strategic thinker, Mikhail
Nikolaevich Tukhachevsky.
This book is about the process of doctrinal, technological, and
w eapons innovation w ithin the RKKA during the early years of
industrialization in the Soviet Union, 1928-1933 —a time w hen the
expectations of grand economic achievements leading to an
independent and autarkic state, free of so-called capitalist caprices, were
high. Among the key sources of innovation during these years were the
vision and entrepreneurship of the "brainchild of the Red Army,"
M arshal Tukhachevsky; the tactical and technical lessons learned from
m ilitary encounters in the Far East at the turn of the decade; struggles
over budgetary allocations by the governm ent and party and the role of
the m ilitary hierarchy in trying to influence those decisions in their
favor; the contributions of foreign experts and the use of foreign
m ilitary equipm ent in Russia; the opportunities to study m ilitary tactics

1
2 Introduction

and strategy abroad; and indigenous research and developm ent

projects. Before turning to the individual sources of innovation and the
politics surrounding them, I examine the context in w hich this
innovation w as occurring in term s of the historiography of the Red
Arm y's early years, the unique interw ar environm ent, and the im pact of
civilian participation in the Red Army's affairs.

Totalitarianism and the Red Army

The post-W orld W ar II era ushered in a wave of political
theorizing in the W est that com pared the Soviet Union under Stalin to
Germ any under Hitler, characterizing both as totalitarian regimes.
H annah A rendt, one of the earliest philosophers to describe in great
detail the sim ilarities betw een the totalitarianism of Stalin and Hitler,
saw these tw o regim es as quite distinct from other dictatorships or
autocracies. In her view, a totalitarian regime lacked hierarchy; there
w ere no intervening institutional levels betw een the Führer and the
masses, thereby m aking total control of the country possible.

T o ta lita ria n d o m in a tio n ... a im s a t a b o lish in g fre e d o m . T ec h n ically ,

th is a b se n c e o f a n y a u th o rity o r h ie ra rc h y in th e to ta lita ria n sy ste m
is s h o w n b y th e fac t th a t b e tw e e n th e s u p r e m e p o w e r a n d th e ru le d
th e re a re n o re lia b le in te rv e n in g le vels, e a c h o f w h ic h w o u ld receiv e
its d u e s h a re o f a u th o rity a n d o b ed ie n c e. T h e w ill o f th e F ü h re r c a n
b e e m b o d ie d e v e ry w h e re a n d h e h im se lf is n o t tie d to a n y
h ie ra rc h y .1

A rendt agreed w ith Isaac Deutscher that "Stalin saw every

institution, independent of its actual function, only as a 'transm ission
belt' connecting the party w ith the people,"2 and not as independent
organizations equipped w ith their ow n legitimate agendas.
Building on A rendt's work, m any scholars of the totalitarian school
in the 1950s and 1960s focused largely on the fascist and com m unist
leaders' aberrant personalities, which drove them to extreme forms of
terror in order to protect their pow er and im plem ent their program s,
b ut also began to explore how the party, economic, and educational
institutions served these leaders.3 Indeed, the totalitarian m odel did not
allow for external challenges to the leader's decisionmaking because
autonom ous sources of influence were considered m oot.4 In the m id- to
late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, m any studies began to challenge
the use of the totalitarian m odel to explain the politics of the post-Stalin
era, yet the Stalin regime itself continued to be characterized in
In tro d u c tio n 3

totalitarian term s.5 While the totalitarian m odel captured some aspects
of the Stalinist system, particularly in the late 1930s during the height of
the G reat Terror, it oversim plified other im portant aspects. The
relationships am ong and roles of institutions w ithin the state apparatus
w ere rarely examined, and the interplay betw een technical expertise
and ideology was virtually ignored.
Since that time, a few studies have successfully applied
organizational, balance-of-power, and various "hybrid" political and
social science theories to Stalin's policymaking, thereby challenging the
totalitarian image of Soviet society under Stalin. Arch Getty's
reconstruction of the "Great Purges," Kendall Bailee's exam ination of the
role of the technical intelligentsia, Eugene Zaleski's scrutiny of the
economic organs in the Stalin era, and Sheila Fitzpatrick's discussion of
the cultural revolution in Russia betw een 1928 and 1931 have all
adm irably illustrated the lim itations of applying the totalitarian m odel
to the entire period of Stalin's rule.6 These studies suggested that
policym aking in m any societal spheres was not always dom inated by
Stalin and his henchmen, but w as sometimes ad hoc, fragm ented, and
conducted by local authorities. Indeed, there were occasions w hen
decisions and policies were m ade w ithout Stalin's participation.7 As
Getty m akes clear, "None of these [more recent] w orks has suggested
that Stalin was not the m ost pow erful political actor, but some of them
have im plied that he w as not necessarily the author of every initiative."8
Getty him self illustrated that the purges in the 1930s w ere not all p art of
a single phenom enon carefully orchestrated by Stalin. Rather, in an
effort to cleanse its ranks of "undesirable" m em bers, the com m unist
party w as m arked by confusion and chaos, w ith local party bosses
calling m any of the shots.
Despite these m ore nuanced scholarly portrayals of the Stalin era in
technical, economic, and cultural areas, m ost of the W estern scholarship
on the Red Army under Stalin has continued to cast its discussion in a
totalitarian fram ew ork. Several studies have depicted the m ilitary as
perpetually dom inated and controlled by the com m unist party and
Stalin, thereby preventing it from acting as an independent or
"traditional" bureaucracy w ith goals of its ow n that it sought to advance
and did so, in some cases, very successfully. W ith few exceptions, the
earlier scholarship illustrated the m ilitary's im potence vis-à-vis the
com m unist party and its Vozhd.
In tying the functioning of the state directly to the leader himself,
this totalitarian image did not lend itself to nuanced analyses of m ilitary
affairs during the twenty-six years of Stalin's rule. Instead of
4 Introduction

distinguishing betw een w hat could be called "transitional" and "mature"

Stalinism, the scholarship considered the Stalin era in toto and m ade
sw eeping generalizations about m ilitary acquiescence to the party, in
light of the arm y's em asculation by Stalin in his 1937 arrest and m urder
of num erous H igh Com m and officers.9 In essence, the scholarship
projected features of m ature Stalinism —m ore befitting of the totalitarian
m odel—onto the early Stalin period.10
Scholars w ere so convinced of Stalin's overarching influence in
m ilitary affairs that some, such as Roman Kolkowicz, w ent so far as to
conclude that the Red Army lacked its own m ilitary doctrine until the
w ar broke out, w hen Stalin drew up his "perm anent operating factors"
that acted as a doctrine of sorts during W orld W ar II.11 Kolkowicz
view ed Stalin's arm y in a totalitarian context, whereby the Red Army
w as "hemmed in" by com m unist party controls that denied the m ilitary
a distinct identity.12 He also saw Stalin's dom ination of the m ilitary as
unrelenting and "total" and his personal participation in m ilitary m atters
as quite disruptive.

It w a s Stalin , the m ed iocre id e o lo g u e a n d ru th less p ra g m a tist, w h o

fin ally tack led this central p ro b le m o f the ru lers of an y co m m u n ist
society, the q u estio n o f w h at sh o u ld b e the sta tu s o f the m ilitary in
the o n e-party totalitarian state. H e d e fin ed the m ilitary 's role, its
o rgan iz atio n , its relation s w ith the p arty , a n d its so cial a n d p olitical
fu n ction s ... The R ed A rm y e m e rg e d fro m this p ro c e ss a s a n ad ju n ct
o f the ru lin g P arty elite; its o fficers w ere den ied the full au th ority
n ece ssary to the p ractice o f the m ilitary p ro fessio n ; they w e re k ep t in
a p eren n ial state of uncertain ty a b o u t their careers, a n d the m ilitary
co m m u n ity , w h ich ten d s to w a rd ex clu siv e n e ss, w a s forcib ly k ep t
o p e n th ro u gh an elab orate sy ste m o f control a n d in d octrin ation .13

Kolkowicz im plied that Stalin's "terror machine" w as in operation for

the duration of his regime and that only after Stalin's death did the
m ilitary begin to assert itself. How ever, it appears that the m ilitary was
granted substantial autonom y —w ith the exception of the lim ited
political purge of RKKA party organizations in 1929 and 1933 —until
roughly 1936.14
M ikhail Tsypkin argued, in his thesis on the Soviet m ilitary
research and developm ent (R&D) system, that Stalin's intervention in
m ilitary research and developm ent was so pervasive and disruptive
that it not only stunted innovation in w eapons design, but also
prevented the emergence of a m ilitary-industrial complex in the Stalin
era.15 Tsypkin's proposition, which seems to apply to Stalin's entire