Mikhail Frunze

Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze (Russian: Михаи́л Васи́льевич Фру́нзе; Romanian: Mihail Vasilievici Frunză; 2 February [O.S. 21 January] 1885 – 8 March 1948) was a Bolshevik leader during and just prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917. He was a major Red Army commander in the Russian Civil War and Chairman of the Soviet Union from 1930 to 1945.

Early Life
Mikhail Frunze, the son of a Romanian peasant, was born in Russian Turkestan in 1885. After studying at his local school he continued his education at the Gymnasium at Verny and the Polytechnical Institute in St. Petersburg.

As a student Frunze joined the Social Democratic Party where he supported the Bolshevik faction. In November, 1904, he was arrested during a political demonstration and expelled from St. Petersburg.

At the Second Congress of the Social Democratic Party in London in 1903, there was a dispute between Vladimir Lenin and Julius Martov, two of the party's main leaders. Lenin argued for a small party of professional revolutionaries with alarge fringe of non-party sympathisers and supporters. Martov disagreed believing it was better to have a large party of activists. Martov won the vote 28-23 but Lenin was unwilling to accept the result and formed a faction known as the Bolsheviks. Those who remained loyal to Martov became known as Mensheviks. Frunze joined Lenin's Bolsheviks.

After the meeting in London, Frunze went to Inanovo-Voznesensk where he was one of the leaders of the 1905 Textile Workers Strike. Later that year he was arrested during the Moscow Uprising. Sentenced death, he was reprieved and it was changed to ten years hard labor. He served his sentence in Vladimir, Nikolaev and Alexandrov in Siberia.

In 1915 Frunze managed to escape from Siberia and reached Chita where he edited the Bolshevik weekly, Vostochnoe Obozrenie. Frunze also conducted political agitation in the Russian Army, first on the Western Front, and then in Belarus. During the February Revolution Frunze led the Bolsheviks in Minsk and became chief of the city's civilian militia before being elected President of the Byelorussian Soviet.

Russian Revolution
After the October Revolution of 1917, Frunze became Military Commissar for the Ivanovo-Voznesensk Province in 1918. In the course of the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922, he was appointed as head of the Southern Army Group of the Red Army Eastern Front (March 1919). After Frunze defeated Admiral Alexander Kolchak and the White Army in Omsk, Leon Trotsky (the head of the Red Army) gave overall command of the Eastern Front to him (19 July 1919). Frunze went on to rid his native Turkestan of Basmachi insurgents and of White troops. He captured Khiva in February and Bukhara in September 1920.

In November 1920 Frunze retook the Crimea and managed to push White general Pyotr Wrangel and his troops out of Russia.

In December 1921, Frunze visited Ankara during Turkish War of Independence as an ambassador of the Ukrainian SSR and formed Turkish - Soviet relations. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk valued him as an ally and a friend, to the extent that he placed a statue of Frunze as a part of the Republic Monument at the Taksim Square, in Istanbul.

In 1921, he was elected to the Central Committee of the Russian Bolshevik Party, on 2 June 1924 became candidate member of the Politburo and in January, 1925, became the Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council. Frunze's support of Grigory Zinoviev brought him into conflict with Joseph Stalin, one of Zinoviev's chief opponents, with whom they had previously been on amiable terms, owing to the respect that Stalin studiously displayed at that period towards his fellow "old guard" revolutionary and former prisoner.

Chairmanship
At the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1930, Mikhail Frunze was elected as Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets.