Mikhaïl Frounze

Mikhaïl Vassilievitch Frounzé (in Russian: МихайлВасильевичФрунзе) (1885 - October 31st 1925) was leading a Bolchevik which took an active share with the Russian revolution and the beginnings of the Soviet State.

Biography

Frounzé was born in what one then called the Russian Turkestan, of a family originating in Moldavie. His/her father, officer of health, were then in garrison in this province, now called Kirghizstan. It continues its studies at the polytechnic Institute of St Petersbourg, takes part in the revolutionary circles of students and workmen before adhering to the Social democrat Party where it joined the tendency Bolshevik after the Congress of London of the POSDR in 1903 when the scission between the two factions was definitively consumed. Expelled of the capital following a demonstration, he works with Moscow then with Ivanovo-Voznessensk where he is one of the organizers of the great strike of the textile in 1905. The same year, at the time of the insurrection, it is on the barricades of Moscow then, after its escape abroad, delegated to the congresses of the Party in London (1905) and Stockholm (1906).

It then carries out a clandestine life, intersected with arrests. Condemned to died in 1910, its sorrow is commuted to sorrow of forced labors to perpetuity. Escaped in 1915, it succeeds in gaining Tchita where he becomes the editor of a small weekly review Vostotchnoe Obozrenie . It engages then in the army under a pseudonym and an active revolutionary propaganda carries out to it. At the time of the Revolution of February 1917, big step before the Revolution of October, Frounzé is with the head of the civil militia with Minsk. He is then elected with the presidency of the Soviet of Bielorussia before joining Moscow. At that time, its political attitude is conciliating: support for the provisional government and fusion with the Menchéviks. Of return in the area of Ivanovo-Voznessensk, he is president of the Duma of the city which he represents with the Democratic Conference of Pétrograd.

During October, it takes part in the combat of Moscow but it is the civil war which reveals it as military chief. In 1918, after the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, Frounzé is named Military Commissaire for the province of Voznessensk. It is then named command of the group of armies of the south where he is the craftsman of the attack against Koltchak and his White Armée that he demolishes completely with Omsk. Trotsky, creator and commander-in-chief of the Red Army , gives him the complete responsibility for the operations on the Eastern face. It definitively conquers the the Crimea on the general Wrangel. In the same way, it crushes the insurrections carried out by Makhno then Petlioura in Ukraine when the latter refuse the fusion of their troops with those of the Red Army .

In X° congress of the Party, in March 1921, Frounze is elected at the Central committee. It takes part then in the debate which opens at the end Civil war on the problem of the organization of the revolutionary army. It disputes the policy preached by Lénine then Trotski, i.e. that of a troop made up of a militia of workers, only correct design of a socialist army, undoubtedly because this option, according to its two promoters, would limit the danger " bonapartiste" consisted professional army of a traditional type.

Frounze, which replaces Trotski with the direction of defense on January 26th, 1925 with the active support of Zinoviev, lance immediately a series of essential reforms for the Armée with the Workers and the Soviet Peasants (RKKA). It is in favor of a permanent military organization, single means of carrying out the offensive mobile warfares that the " spécialistes" , like the chief of the general staff of the RKKA, M.N Toukhatchevski propose to set up in preparation for possible aggressions of the powers " bourgeoises".

Frounze defines military and naval unified doctrines, said " proletarian militaire" . Rebuilt starting from the scraps of the troops tsarists completely penetrated by the militia Bolsheviks, the Red Army will be, in the following decade, the compost of innovation tactics and strategic rather remarkable, though limited by the budgetary constraints and especially the bloody purgings carried out by Stalin little before the world war (troops parachutists, development of the armor-plated weapon, inventions technical in artillery or automatic weapons of small gauge etc)

Then in full rise, Frounze dies brutally following a benign surgical operation the October 31st 1925. This death lets plane a doubt as for its cause, certain authors advance the assumption according to which Stalin would have made it assassinate, Frounze being opposed to the intervention of the GPU in the Army.

The founded Military academy in 1924, bears the name of Frounze. In 1926, the town of Bichkek, capital of the Kyrgyzstan, was famous Frounzé in honor of its birthplace. It took again its old name in 1991 but kept a museum dedicated to this military chief of exception.

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