Mikhail Frunze

Mikhail Frunze
Mikhail Frunze
Михаил Фрунзе
	Frunze in 1925
People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs
	In office; 25 January 1925 – 31 October 1925
Premier	Alexey Rykov
Party Aliases	Mikhailov; Arseny; Trifonych
Pen Names	Sergei Petrov; A. Shuisky; M. Mirsky
Preceded by	Leon Trotsky
Succeeded by	Kliment Voroshilov
Candidate member of the 13th Politburo
	In office; 2 June 1924 – 31 October 1925
Personal details
Born	Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze; 2 February 1885; Pishpek, Semirechye Oblast, Russian Turkestan, Russian Empire
Died	31 October 1925 (aged 40); Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Resting place	Kremlin Wall Necropolis, Moscow
Nationality	Soviet
Political party	RSDLP (Bolsheviks) (1903–1918) ; All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (1918–1925)
Spouse	Sophia Alekseevna Popova (1917⁠–⁠1925)
Children	Timur (son); Tatyana (daughter)
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Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze (Russian: Михаил Васильевич Фрунзе; Romanian: Mihail Frunză; 2 February 1885 – 31 October 1925) was a Soviet revolutionary, politician, army officer and military theorist. Born to a Bessarabian father and a Russian mother in Russian Turkestan, Frunze attended the Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University and became an active member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). Following the RSDLP ideological split, he sided with Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction. He led the textile workers strike in Ivanovo during the 1905 Russian Revolution, for which he was later sentenced to death before being commuted to life-long hard labour in Siberia. He escaped ten years later and took active part in the 1917 February Revolution in Minsk and the October Revolution in Moscow.

Frunze distinguished himself as one of the most successful Red Army commanders during the Russian Civil War, achieving major victories over the White Army of Pyotr Wrangel in Crimea and Nestor Makhno's anarchist movement in Ukraine. In 1921, Frunze was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. In 1925, he was named chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council.

His health failing due to a chronic ulcer, Frunze died in 1925 during surgery and received a burial in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. The capital of the Kirghiz SSR and his birthplace, Pishpek (modern Bishkek), was renamed after him from 1926 until 1991. The Frunze Military Academy, one of the most prestigious military educational institutions in the Soviet Union, was also named in his honour.