Mikhail Frunze

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Frunze, Cdr Mikhail Vasilevich (1885-1925), Soviet politician, military leader, and theorist; founder and ideologue of the Red Army, Soviet military doctrine, and Soviet preparations for total war. A student at St Petersburg Polytechnic, Frunze was active during the 1905-7 revolution and was subsequently condemned to death twice, a sentence commuted to lifelong exile in Siberia. From 1910 to 1915 he did hard labour, but then escaped and made contact with the Bolsheviks who, in an extraordinarily risky move, smuggled him into the army near Minsk under the name of Mikhaylov, to carry out political agitation. As a party activist he moved widely and thus gained an unusually comprehensive picture of the war which would stand him in good stead later, and in particular of the colossal resources consumed and the need to break through the trench stalemate.

After the March 1917 Revolution in Petrograd (formerly and now St Petersburg), Frunze established a soviet of workers and soldiers' deputies in Minsk. At the end of August he used his contacts to disrupt the movement by rail of Gen Kornilov's counter-revolutionary forces against Petrograd. He was then sent to run the Bolshevik party in Shuya, east of Moscow, and took part in the November Revolution in Moscow (see Russian Revolutions). In early 1918 he was party leader in Ivanovo-Vosnesensk province and then, in July, took part in the defeat of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries' revolt in Moscow and of the White Guards in Yaroslavl.

From August 1918 he was military commissar of the Yaroslavl Military District; from February 1919, commander of Fourth Army; from July, commander of the Eastern Front (army group) during the defeat of Kolchak; and, from August, of the Turkestan Front. In 1920 he was appointed to the Central Committee of the Communist Party as representative for Kazakhstan and Turkestan and from September commanded the Southern Front (army group), which completed the final defeat of the main ‘White’ forces with the capture of Perekop, the ‘White Verdun’. Frunze had begun studying military history and the science of war while commanding the Yaroslavl Military District and drew extensively on the advice of former tsarist officers including the former Gen Fedor Novitskiy. In the attack on Perekop he unearthed records of the Russian attack on the same area in 1737-8, and made sure the attacking troops practised the assault on accurate replicas of the terrain and the obstacles they would encounter.

Frunze was then commander of the armed forces of the Ukraine and Crimea. He was selected to introduce the proposal to unite Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine, and the Transcaucasian Federation in the USSR. In January 1924 he was part of a special commission set up to investigate the state of the Red Army, and in April he became its COS. In 1924-5, following the creation of the USSR, he was deputy president and then president of the Revolutionary Military Soviet of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (RVS RKKA), deputy people's commissar and then people's commissar for Military and Naval Affairs (Defence Minister). In this capacity he carried through the military reforms of 1924-5.

Frunze was a founder of Soviet military thinking and military doctrine. The first issue of Army and Revolution, in July 1921, contained an article by Frunze, ‘A Unified Military Doctrine and the Red Army’, which set out the definition that remained standard until the 1980s. He also sponsored the main military journal, Military Science and Revolution, which became Military Thought and the Revolution in 1922 and, from 1925, Military Thought, and was editor of War and Revolution. He also published more than a score of books between 1919 and 1925, on civil war campaigns, national defence, the choice between a militia and a professional army, the need for command by one man as opposed to the system of commissars introduced in the civil war, and the military industrial base. He thus laid the foundations for the USSR's victory in WW II. In the documents prepared by the RKKA staff in 1925 under Frunze's direction, mobilization was viewed as the conversion not only of the army and navy, but of the whole of society to a wartime footing. Frunze's energy and genius made him many enemies, in particular Trotsky and his supporters. By now he was suffering from a stomach ulcer and his heart was too weak for him to undergo anaesthetic for an operation. Nevertheless, he was ordered to undergo surgery in what the official enquiry subsequently decided was a ‘medical murder’.

Bibliography

• Gareev, Makhmut, M. V. Frunze: Military Theorist (London, 1988).
• Pilnyak, Boris, ‘Gibel' Narkoma M. V. Frunze’, Krasnaya zvezda, 23 Oct. 1993

— Christopher Bellamy

The Soviet military leader Mikhail Vasilievich Frunze (1885-1925) reformed the Red Army and guided the militarization of the former U.S.S.R.

Mikhail Frunze was born on Feb. 2, 1885, in Pishpek (renamed Frunze), Kirghizia, the son of a medical orderly. He attended the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology and joined the Bolshevik party in 1904. He was an active party member, and his revolutionary ardor earned him a sentence of 8 years at hard labor.

During the civil war years Frunze distinguished himself, first against Adm. A. V. Kolchak on the eastern front in 1919 and later against Gen. P. N. Wrangel on the southern front in 1920. In what was perhaps the most brilliant military victory of the civil war, Frunze ordered his men to wade through the shallow sea of the narrow Perekop Isthmus past Wrangel's sleeping White Army. Cannon, men, and cavalry all floated silently by the enemy, and in the morning Wrangel's men were dumb-founded to find themselves surrounded by the Red Army.

Frunze conceived the "unitary military doctrine," combining ideology, determination, and aggressiveness in the promotion of world revolution. In January 1921, 2 months after the close of the civil war, Frunze astounded war-weary Russia by calling for total Soviet militarization for the war of the future. In June 1925 the U.S.S.R. Congress of Soviets passed the momentous law ordering the total economic mobilization of the Soviet state. The continual growth of his program of peacetime preparedness played no small role in enabling the U.S.S.R. to become one of the world's greatest military powers.

Frunze was appointed deputy commissar for military affairs in March 1924 and succeeded Leon Trotsky as commissar for military affairs in January 1925. His influence on the development of the Red Army was of decisive importance, as he proceeded to regularize the military organization. He was responsible for the circulation in November 1924 of a declaration that defined the duties of both the military commanders and the political commissars, thus resolving the difficult problem of the unity of command. Field-service regulations were redrafted, and he systematized the duties of the conscript in a recruitment law that served as the basis of all such subsequent legislation until 1936. Frunze believed in the importance of a sound officers' corps and stimulated the development of a countrywide network of advanced military schools.

This rise in the military was paralleled by Frunze's ascent in the party. In 1921 he was elected to the Central Committee, and in 1924 he was made a deputy member of the Politburo.

The circumstances surrounding Mikhail Frunze's premature death on Oct. 31, 1925, are rather mysterious. Stalin summoned Frunze to Moscow, where he was ordered to undergo surgery for cancer, from which he never recovered. His successor as commissar was Stalin's old friend K. E. Voroshilov.

Further Reading

A recent biography of Frunze is Walter Darnell Jacobs, Frunze: The Soviet Clausewitz, 1885-1925 (1970). Another excellent source is John Erickson, The Soviet High Command: A Military-Political History, 1918-1941 (1962). See also Michel Gardner, A History of the Soviet Army (1959; trans. 1966).

(1885 - 1925), military leader and theoretician.

Mikhail Vasilievich Frunze was a native of Semirchesk oblast, the son of an orderly, and a student in the Petersburg Polytechnic Institute, from which he failed to graduate. He joined the social democratic movement (1904) and led strikes in Ivanovo (May 1905). Arrested and twice sentenced to death, he was exiled instead and managed to escape. He did party work in Belorussia (1917), was head of the militia in Minsk, and was a member of the Party committee of the West Front. Frunze was head of the Party Soviet in Shuia (September 1917). Opposed to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, he joined the "Left-Communists." Frunze was military commissar of Yaroslavl Military District. From February 1919, he was at the front as commander of the Fourth and Turkestan Armies, then he was commander of the south wing of the East Front, fighting against Kolchak. From July 1919, Frunze was commander of the East Front deployed in the Urals, and from September 1919, he commanded the Turkestan Front. From September 1920, Frunze served as commander of the South Front deployed in Crimea and accepted the surrender of Pyotr Wrangel's remaining forces in the Crimea, who were later massacred by the Party and Cheka operatives, despite his disapproval. From December 1920, he headed the Revolutionary Military Soviet (RVS) and commanded the Crimea and Ukraine forces, which embarked on various punitive operations. He was elected to the Party Central Committee (1921), appointed as Deputy People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs (March 1924), and later (April 1924) served as the Chief of Staff of the Red Army. Frunze was a candidate member of the Politburo (1924). He authored a number of studies, including a guide on reorganizing the Red Army (1921), on military doctrine (1921, 1924), and on Vladimir Lenin and the Red Army (1925). He led the military reforms in 1924 - 1925. Frunze's ideas, formed in bruising battles with Leon Trotsky, involved a "unified doctrine" and setting up of a bureaucratically structured Red Army high command to meet wartime as well as peacetime needs. The necessity for an industrial defense base, as well as machinery for rapid mobilization, was also emphasized. These views were opposed by those who favored a militia-type Red Army.

On March 11, 1924, Frunze was appointed as Trotsky's deputy, and on January 1, 1925, Joseph Stalin named him Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs, replacing Trotsky. Frunze's death, as a result of an operation recommended by Stalin, has given rise to a number of claims that his demise was no accident and that it gave Stalin the opportunity to replace him with Kliment Voroshilov, about whose loyalty there was little doubt. Frunze is buried on Red Square. His son, fighter pilot Timur Frunze, was killed during the Battle of Stalingrad.

Bibliography

Gareev, M. A. (1987). M. V. Frunze, Military Theorist. Washington, DC: Pergamon-Brassey's.

Von Hagen, Mark (1990). Soldiers in a Proletarian Leadership: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

—MICHAEL PARRISH

Mikhail Frunze

Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze (Russian: Михаи́л Васи́льевич Фру́нзе; Romanian: Mihail Frunză; also known as Арсений Трифоныч–Arseniy Trifonych; February 2 [O.S. January 21] 1885–October 31, 1925) was a Bolshevik leader during and just prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Legacy 3 Quotes 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External links

Biography

Frunze was born in Bishkek, then a small Imperial Russian garrison town in the Kyrgyz part of Turkestan, to a Moldovan medical practitioner (originally from the Kherson Governorate) and his Russian wife. He began his studies at Verniy (present name Almaty), and in 1904 he attended the Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University.^[1][2]

The monument to Michael Frunze beside the Russian Army Cultural Center, in Moscow, Russia

At the Second Congress of the Social Democratic Party Labour Party in London (1903), during the ideological split between Vladimir Lenin and Julius Martov, the two main party leaders, over party tactics (Martov argued for a large party of activists, whilst Lenin wanted a small group of professional revolutionaries with a large fringe group of sympathisers), Frunze sided with the dissident minority of the Bolsheviks (opposed to Martov's Mensheviks).

Two years after the Second Congress, Frunze was an important leader in the 1905 Revolution, at the head of striking textile workers in Shuya and Ivanovo. Following the disastrous end of the movement, Frunze was arrested and sentenced to death, but he was later reprieved and his sentence was commuted to life at hard labour. After ten years in Siberian prisons, Frunze escaped to Chita, where he became editor of the Bolshevik weekly newspaper called Vostochnoe Obozrenie.

During the February Revolution, Frunze was head of the Minsk civilian militia before being elected president of the Byelorussian Soviet. He later went to Moscow, and led an armed force of workers to aid in the struggle for control of the city.

After the October takeover, in 1918, Frunze became Military Commissar for the Voznesensk Province. During the early days of the Russian Civil War, he was appointed as head of the Southern Army Group. After Frunze defeated Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak and the White Army in Omsk, Leon Trotsky (the head of the Red Army) gave total command of the Eastern Front to him. Frunze went on to rid his native Turkestan of Basmachi insurgents and White troops. He captured Khiva in February and Bukhara in September.

In November 1920, Frunze retook the Crimea and managed to push White general Pyotr Wrangel and his troops out of Russia. He also led the destruction of Nestor Makhno's anarchist movement in Ukraine and the nationalist movement of Symon Petliura.

In 1921, he was elected to the Central Committee of the Russian Bolshevik Party, and, in January, 1925, became the Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council. A strong supporter of Grigory Zinoviev, Frunze came into conflict with Joseph Stalin, one of Zinoviev's chief opponents.

He died of chloroform poisoning during a stomach operation on 31 October 1925; some believe that Stalin arranged his death.^[3]

Boris Pilnyak's story "The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon" was based on Frunze's death. He was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.

Legacy

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History

Organization

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Leaders

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In 1926, the city of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, was renamed Frunze in his honour. It reverted back to its former name in 1991; nevertheless, Frunze himself is still commemorated in the city: a street and a museum in the centre of the city are named after him. The museum contains the cottage in which he grew up, fully intact inside a larger modern structure.

The Frunze Military Academy, one of the most respected in the former Soviet Union, was also named in his honour. Also, the honorific title of the Soviet 2nd Rifle Division was at some point the 2nd Belarusian Red Banner Rifle Division in the name of M.V. Frunze.

A Moscow Metro station was named Frunzenskaya in his honour, and a stone carving of his likeness stands in one end of the station. Shuya is home to a memorial museum dedicated to Frunze. Streets in many Russian cities are named after him. From 1926 till 1991 the most nown Russian Military Academy (University) was boar the name of Frunze^[4].

Also, after his death, the first name for boys Frunzik (roughly "Little Frunze") became quite popular in Caucasia and Soviet Turkestan, the most famous name-bearer probably being Frunzik Mkrtchyan. ^[5]

Quotes

• "All that we do, every action, should correspond to the highest ideals of the Revolution."
• "The Red Army was created by the workers and peasants and is lead by the will of the working class. That will is being carried out by the united Communist Party."

Preceded by Leon Trotsky

People's Commissar for Army and Navy Affairs 1925

Succeeded by Kliment Voroshilov

References

1. ^ Martin McCauley, Who's Who in Russia Since 1900, Routledge, 1997, ISBN 0415138973, p. 87-88
2. ^ (Russian)M.V. Frunze, Autobiography, 1921 from М.В. Фрунзе: Военная и политическая деятельность, М.: Воениздат, 1984 , hosted at Militera project
3. ^ V. Topolyansky. Blow from the past. (Russian: В. Торолянский. Сквозняк из прошлого.) Novaya Gazeta/InaPress. Moscow. 2006. ISBN 5-87135-183-2. Frunze was administrated a chloroform dose that many times exceeded the dose normally applied for narcosis. All four doctors who operated him (Martynov, Grekov, Rozanov and Get'e) died one by one in 1934.
4. ^ See http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Военная_академия_им._Фрунзе and http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Общевойсковая_академия_Вооружённых_Сил_Российской_Федерации
5. ^ http://kino.ukr.net/persons/543/

Further reading

• Gareev, M.A. (1987). M.V. Frunze, Military Theorist. Washington, D.C.: Pergamon-Brassey's. ISBN 0080351832. 
• Jacobs, Walter Darnell (1969). Frunze: The Soviet Clausewitz, 1885–1925. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 

External links

• Biography
• Frunze's writings on military theory

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