Glossary
The encyclopedia of the tourist
F
Frunze, Mihail Vasilievich
(1885–1925), was born in Pishpek - which was then called Bishkek.
His father was a Moldovian doctor«s assistant.
He spent a tempestuous time in Moscow, and after several arrests for
revolutionary activity - as one of Lenin«s pupils, he eventually commanded
the Red Guards which occupied the Kremlin in October 1917.
A major player in the civil war he was responsible for directing the
defeat of the White Russian Army under Admiral Kolchak in Siberia and for
routing another army commanded by General Wrangel in the Caucasus Mountains.
In September 1918 he was dispatched to Tashkent in an armored train to head
a «Turkic Commission» along with another general, (General Kuibyshev), to
prevent a counter-revolution; to purge the «elite», re-educate the masses
and introduce the industrialization of the region. He then led the Bolshevik
forces which took Khiva (meeting virtually no resistance) and Bukhara (after
a four day fight) in 1920, and then pushed the Basmachi rebels out of Ferghana
valley.
He replaced Trotsky as War Commissar and introduced a system of conscription
requiring compulsory peacetime military service and molded the Red Army
into a formidable fighting force and revolutionary tool.
After Lenin«s death, he survived several mysterious car accidents, but
eventually died after submitting to a stomach operation at the order of
the Politburo in 1926. His home town was renamed Frunze in his honor (the
name was changed to Bishkek in 1991). There is a statue of him standing
outside Moscow and one of the leading Soviet Military academies was named
after him.
The Frunze Museum (on Frunze Street) preserves many artifacts related
to the general’s life and times, including what is said to be the house in
which he as born. There is a statue of M. V. Frunze on horseback facing
the railway station at the top of Prospekt Erkindik. Top
