Frunze, Mikhail

Frunze, Mikhail [Фрунзе, Михаил], b 2 February 1885 in Pishpek (now Frunze) in Kirgizia, d 31 October 1925 in Moscow. Soviet military commander and Communist Party leader who served briefly in Ukraine. In September 1920 he was appointed commander of the southern front of the Red Army, where he defeated the White Volunteer Army of General Petr Wrangel. In December 1920 he became plenipotentiary representative of the Revolutionary Military Council in Ukraine and the Crimea and, in February 1922, deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and deputy chairman of the Supreme Ukrainian Economic Council. Frunze fought and defeated the Ukrainian partisan forces of Nestor Makhno and Yurii Tiutiunnyk (see Partisan movement in Ukraine, 1918–22). From November 1921 till January 1922 Frunze headed the Soviet Ukrainian diplomatic mission to Turkey, which concluded a treaty of friendship between the Ukrainian SSR and Turkey. In 1921–4 he was a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine. He was also a member of the All-Union Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1921 and was made a candidate member of the All-Union Politburo in 1924. In that year Frunze was transferred to military and Party work in Moscow to act as a counterweight to Leon Trotsky, whom he replaced as the People's Commissar of War on 26 January 1925.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]