Frunze, Mikhail Vasilyevich

Related Category: Russian, Soviet, and CIS History: Biographies

(mēkhəyēl´ vəsē´lyəvĭch frn´zĕ), 1885–1925, Russian general. A revolutionary, he was exiled (1914) to Siberia but returned to take part in the October Revolution of 1917. In the civil war that followed, he led the Soviet armies that forced A. V. Kolchak back into Siberia and drove P. N. Wrangel from the Crimea. He also helped establish Soviet control over Russian Turkistan. As people's commissar for the army and navy (1924–25), he reorganized the armed forces.