Mikhail Tukhachevsky

Mikhail Tukhachevsky, nicknamed the Red Napoleon, was a Soviet general and military theorist active between 1918 and 1937. He fought as an officer in the First World War and then in the Russian Civil War, where he defended the Moscow district, commanded the Fifth Army in the recapture of Siberia from Kolchak and led forces against Denikin. In 1920 and 1921 he commanded the Western Front in the Polish-Soviet War, which ended in defeat outside Warsaw. He later served as Chief of Staff of the Red Army and became a Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1935. A leading advocate of mechanized and airborne forces and of the theory of deep operations, he was executed in 1937 during Stalin's military purges.