Mikhail Tukhachevsky was born in Smolensk governorate into a noble family. He graduated from the 1st Moscow Cadet Corps (1912), the Aleksander Military School (1914). A participant of World War I, where he was taken prisoner (1914). In September 1917, he escaped and returned to Russia.

Since March 1918, he served in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. He worked in the military department of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) of the Soviets, he was Military commissar of the Moscow military district. In June 1918 – January 1919, Tukhachevsky was Commander of the 1st Army of the Eastern Front of the Red Army. In September 1918, he developed and implemented an operation to capture Simbirsk. In January–March 1919, he was Assistant Commander of the Southern Front, Commander of the 8th Army, which participated in the battles against the Whites’ Don Army. In April–November 1919, he commanded the 5th Army of the Eastern Front of the Red Army. Tukhachevsky led operations against Aleksander Kolchak’s forces. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner for Chelyabinsk Operation, as well as the Honorary Revolutionary Weapon (1919).

From February to April 1920, he held the post of Commander of the Caucasian Front, which completed the defeat of Anton Denikin’s forces. In April 1920 – March 1921, he was Commander of the Western Front in the course of the Soviet-Polish War. Due to the lack of coordination with the Southwestern Front (commander Aleksander Egorov, member of the Revolutionary Military Council Joseph Stalin), Tukhachevsky’s troops were defeated near Warsaw by the Polish army led by Józef Pilsudski.

His subsequent career included the following: in March 1921, Commander of the 7th Army involved in the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion; in May 1921, participation in the suppression of the uprising of Aleksander Antonov in Tambov governorate (the Tambov rebellion);

since 1921, Head of the Military Academy of the Red Army; in 1922–1924, Commander of the Western Front; in 1924–1925, Deputy Chief-of-Staff, since 1925, Chief-of-Staff of the Red Army; in 1928–1931, Commander of the Leningrad Military District; since 1931, Chief of armaments of the Red Army, then Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR, Deputy and 1st Deputy People’s Commissar of Defense; since 1934, a candidate member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. In 1935, he became Marshal of the Soviet Union. Tukhachevsky was an author of works on the history of the civil war and a military theoretician.

In 1937, he was sentenced to death and shot in the so-called “Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization”. He was rehabilitated in 1957.