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This post describes the secret trial and execution of eight high-ranking Soviet military commanders in 1937. Shared solely for historical education and remembrance of the victims of Stalin’s Great Purge.
Stalin’s Night of Terror: The Execution of Tukhachevsky and the Eight Generals (11–12 June 1937)
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In the early hours of 12 June 1937, in a basement beneath the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court in Moscow, eight of the Soviet Union’s most senior and talented commanders were shot one by one, only minutes after a closed “trial” that lasted less than two hours.
The accused:
Marshal Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky – First Deputy People’s Commissar of Defence, the Red Army’s leading strategistArmy Commanders Iona Yakir and Ieronim UborevichCorps Commanders Vitaly Primakov, Vitovt Putna, Boris Feldman, August Kork, and Robert Eideman
All were accused of belonging to a fictitious “Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organisation” plotting to overthrow Stalin and hand the country to Germany and Japan. The evidence was fabricated by the NKVD; confessions were extracted through prolonged torture, sleep deprivation, and threats against families.
The trial on 11 June 1937 was held in complete secrecy before a panel chaired by Vasily Ulrich. No defence lawyers were present, no witnesses were called, and the defendants were not allowed to speak except to confirm their “guilt.” Within 90 minutes all were sentenced to death. Stalin personally approved the verdict the same evening.
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That night the eight men were taken to a prepared execution cellar. They were shot in the back of the head and buried in unmarked graves. Their families were informed only that they had been sentenced to “ten years without right of correspondence” – a euphemism for execution.
The purge did not stop there. Between 1937 and 1939 approximately 35,000–40,000 Red Army officers were arrested or dismissed; around 10,000–15,000 were executed. Three out of five marshals, 13 out of 15 army commanders, and 50 out of 57 corps commanders disappeared.
The consequences were catastrophic: during the Winter War (1939–1940) and the first year of Operation Barbarossa (1941–1942), the Red Army suffered staggering losses directly attributable to the destruction of its experienced leadership.
Only in 1956–1957, during Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation, were Tukhachevsky and the others posthumously rehabilitated. Their convictions were declared “baseless” and obtained under torture.
We remember Marshal Tukhachevsky and his seven comrades today not to reopen old wounds, but to honour the thousands of officers who were murdered by their own state in peacetime; to recognise that paranoia in power can be as deadly as any enemy army; and to ensure that the lesson of June 1937 – that no nation is stronger when it destroys its own defenders – is never forgotten.
Official & reputable sources
Central Archive of the Russian Ministry of Defence – Case No. 96787 (Tukhachevsky et al.)
Memorial Society archives – rehabilitation files 1956–1957
Conquest, Robert – The Great Terror: A Reassessment (Oxford, 2008)
Reese, Roger R. – Stalin’s Reluctant Soldiers & The Purge of the Red Army (University Press of Kansas, 1996, 2011)
Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” to the 20th Party Congress, 25 February 1956