The Murder of Tukhachevsky - Part 6: The Real Diplomatic Plot

In the early months of 1936, a number of articles began appearing in the Russian emigre press of Paris and Prague. These articles, published in the Czechoslovak Znamiia Rossiia and Vozrozhdenie in Paris, alluded to a conspiracy headed by Tukhachevsky, which had the aim of toppling Stalin from power. They also claimed that Tukhachevsky had been a German agent since World War I72. The spurious nature of these reports was matched by the equally unctuous character of their writers. Among them were such figures as Kotypin-Liubsky, referred to by at least one French judicial authority as "an agent of the Soviet secret service," and N. N. Alekseev, who was also named as an NKVD agent by the Russian emigre writer Roman Gul'73.
In April of that same year, Czechoslovak officials began receiving information from Russian emigre circles in Prague, which essentially corroborated the above-mentioned press articles. The information claimed that the plotters had the intention of establishing friendly relations with Germany and renouncing the Soviet Union's treaty obligations with the Czechoslovak republic74. In October of that same year, Czechoslovak police managed to arrest some 'suspicious Gestapo agents' in Prague who were preparing to strip the Soviet military attache of his documents. Under interrogation, the agents divulged that the military attache was maintaining contacts with German counter-intelligence75.
That the above-mentioned reports may have come from NKVD sources is supported by Walter Krivitsky, the former rezident of Soviet military intelligence in Western Europe. Krivitsky, writing in 1938, claimed that "the resident agent of the NKVD could publish in the right-wing Vozrozhdenie whatever material he wanted76." The same author goes on to describe one operation in Paris, in which he was ordered to assist, which involved the use of two of his agents who could impersonate German officers, "impressive enough to pass as military attaches 77."
Taking into consideration the possibility that both the writers of the emigre articles and the arrested 'Gestapo' agents may in fact have been NKVD operatives, the question arises for what purpose would the Soviet government have directed such a campaign against its own allied - France and Czechoslovakia. The answer to this question takes us to the very heart of the entire operation which was conducted by foreign agents of the NKVD against the leadership of the RKKA and which accidentally - as it turns out - drew in the German SD as uninvited guests.
Over the years there has arisen a general line of argument that Stalin was counting on receiving information implicating Tukhachevky and other Soviet military officials from a foreign source, and that this source was to have been the German secret service78. The basis of this theory rests upon the fact that General Nikolai Skoblin was a known NKVD agent and that the SD official Jahnke perceived this to be the motive behind Skoblin's intention to meet with SD officials. This view is suspect on several grounds.
First, what many writers seem to forget is that Skoblin was in effect a triple-agent: a member of the White Russian intelligence service since the mid-twenties, of the Soviet OGPU since at least 1930, and of the German SD since around 1935. The idea that he may have been operating independely can not be dismissed. Nor could it be argued that Skoblin would not have risked passing on such information to the Germans without Soviet consent, since the initial rumours of Tukhochevsky's supposed perfidy had already appeared in print almost a year earlier, at the possible behest of the NKVD. Thus, Skoblin's 'disclosures' were already old information. In addition, it appears that Skoblin's prime motivations were ambition and money, and therefore the possibility of receiving German coin may be just as valid an explanation for his actions as an order to do so from his Soviet handlers79.
Second, if the Russians were intent on passing on information implicating Tukhachevsky, one could argue whether they could have chosen a more tainted and suspect agant than Skoblin. That the suspect handler of the incriminating information could not fail to make the said information suspect in turn is amply borne out by the warnings of Jahnke. If the goal of the Soviets was to receive the information back from an external source, the use of Skoblin was very close to employing an automatic brake on the transmission of the material.
Third, in distinction to the allegedly varied and persistant attempts of the NKVD to disnform French and Czechoslovak officials concerning Tukhachevsky's alleged doings, the sole junket of Skoblin to Berlin appears to be the only direct source for German officials regarding the "Tukhachevsky plot." This should make it obvious that Berlin was never considered as the main target of the NKVD effort and that Skoblin's venture may have been an independent effort. If Stalin was indeed hoping to receive information from German hands, the NKVD campaign seems to have been waged under anemic conditions. It is probably for this reason that Skoblin's information seemed so significant for some German intelligence officials.
Finally, the whole idea of requiring a foreign source for materials seems questionable. Considering that the information acquired from Benes never saw the light of day either in the Military Soviet proceedings or in the actual trial, this should already raise doubts as to why such a campaign would have been launched if the proceeds were not to be used80. Additional arguments concerning the necessity of such 'foreign evidence,' in order to persuade some of Stalin's inner circle, also falls on barren ground81. Neither Defense Commissar Voroshilov nor Marshal Budyonny, who both disliked Tukhachevsky for their own personal reasons, had the need for such 'proof.' Nor would figures such as NKVD Chief Yezhov, Politburo member Kaganovich and Stalin's Deputy Molotov, who all owed Stalin their careers, would have made such 'proof' necessary to produce82. As it stands, direct evidence - either factual or falsified - was unnecessary in any of the other cases against leading party, government and military officials83.
The only adequate explanation is taht it was not so much the false information itself that Stalin wanted, but rather the passing on of such information. In other words, the NKVD campaign was conducted not so much to convince domestic consumption - this, indeed, would have been accomplished through the standard tools of a totalitarian state - but foreign observors. Butchery of the Red Army command could not fail to cause concern among the ruling circles of those countries allied to the Soviet Union. In the absence of convincing evidence of a Red Army plot, the leaders of countries such as Czechoslovakia and France would have been forced to conclude that the ruler of Moscow was either a bloodthirsty tyrant or a madman84. The spread of false information in both allied capitals would have given a ready explanation for the Soviet leader's actions. The passing on of the information from either Paris or Prague would have amptly demonstrated that the rumours concerning Tukhachevsky were believed to be true to the point that the USSR's allies had felt it necessary to alert the Soviet government of the danger - which is exactly what Benes did.
There is, however, still one possible explanation for the Soviet disinformation campaign, which has not been adequately developed: that Soviet disinformation would allow Moscow to shift ultimate blame for Tukhachevsky's arrest and execution onto others. Since the implicating documents came from the Czechoslovak government, the Soviet government could always wash its hands of the whole affair by claiming that it was duped by one of its own allies85. Finally, by reacting in such a public and decisive way to information inherently threatening to the existing political and military balance in Europe and, more specifically, to the position of France and Czechoslovakia, Stalin could subsequently assert that his actions in eliminating Tukhachevsky's group were indicative of his strong adherence to the principles of the French-Czechoslovak-Soviet pact86.
As it turned out, however, the Czechoslovak government did not respond to the information provided by the NKVD through the White Russian emigre papers and officials and through the possibly impersonated Gestapo officials. Instead, they chose to accept the information provided by Goering and the German secret service - information which also ultimately originated from the NKVD. Thus, the German secret service was able to inadvertently provide the necessary push on Prague which Stalin's own secret service had been unable to accomplish.
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