Mikhail Tukhachevsy, Chairman of the Government of National Reconstruction
Ukrainians in Kiev tear down and destroy a statue of former Premier Joseph Stalin in support for the March on Moscow
T-36 tanks take positions near Leningrad after local Party Officials condemn the March.
Reconstruction was a short lived governing council led by a cabal of generals in the Red Army led by Marshal Voroshilov and Marshal Tukhachevsky. As the Great Purge went on the Red Army grew increasingly restless and Stalin increasingly targeted the military. In 1937 Stalin overreached and accused Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Hero of the Civil War and prominent General of the Red Army, of treason and ordered him arrested. Voroshilov, an adamant supporter of Stalin, obliged and moved to have Tukhachevsky arrested. However when the order reached the ordinary officers of the Army, some of who knew and liked Tukhacehvsky, word quickly made it to the would be captive of Voroshilov's orders. Tukhachevsky and Stalin were old rivals so when he heard that his name was now on a list for execution, Tukhachevsky and his closest staff officers quickly managed to slip away (with the help of sympathetic soldiers) and rallied sympathetic generals and soldiers to their cause in a firebrand speech from an undisclosed location. Stalin moved quickly to gather the Red Army and put down the budding rebellion but, with dissent already in the ranks, orders were lost or disobeyed and regular troops refused to leave their barracks. Instead men loyal to Tukhachevsky gathered near Ryazan while Voroshilov began to muster a counter near Moscow. As 1937 came to a close the two sides seemed ready and the USSR seemed to be on the brink of civil war. At this crucial moment history decided to turn like it sometimes does. A chance mistake in a blizzard sent Voroshilov's staff car careening into an intersection where a speeding truck hit it so hard the car nearly split in half. Needless to say Voroshilov was killed instantly and in the few days it took a new general loyal enough to lead an army to be found, Tukhachevsky made his move. At the head of his army the Marshal marched his men from Ryazan to Moscow. Stalin, stubborn to a fault, stayed in Moscow until Tukhachevksy led his personal guard into the Kremlin themselves. No shots were fired as Stalin was found, arrested and sent to prison (where he would be unceremoniously executed after five years behind bars).
In a speech to a Emergency Session of the Supreme Soviet Tukhachevsky railed against Stalin for hours accusing him of weakening the USSR intentionally and seeking to install himself as a new Tsar. At the end of the speech Tukhachevsky announced, this time in a more solemn tone, that the Supreme Soviet was dissolved until further notice. Until that time where it could be reconvened and select a new Preimer Tukhachevsky and his closest associates would lead the USSR in a governing council called the Government of National Reconstruction. This supposedly temporary period of interim government, which many suspected to last maybe a year at most, would last a decade. [...]
