ABSTRACT

The chief catalyst of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army's (RKKA's) innovation was the former Imperial Army lieutenant-tumed-Red Army commander, shrewd strategic thinker, and savvy politician, Mikhail Nikolaevich Tukhachevsky. In explaining the subjective factors that led to Tukhachevsky's success as the Red Army's key military innovator, Eugene Lewis's study of public entrepreneurs offers a useful framework. Tukhachevsky was also a man well suited to his time who was able to exploit numerous contradictions existing in society generally, and in the military particularly, during the early years of Stalin's rule. One of Tukhachevsky's closest and most valuable colleagues was Vladimir Triandafillov, whose work on "successive operations" laid the groundwork for the further tactical and operational elaboration of the "deep" operational and tactical theories that evolved in the 1930s. Tukhachevsky's success was due partly to his ability to meld the interests of the RKKA with those of the state and particularly Stalin.