The revolutionary career of Mikhail Frunze
In this article, we will begin the story of Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze (Frunzee), who, without having a military education, became the best Soviet commander of the civil war, but, unfortunately, died at the age of 40 on October 31, 1925.
Revolutions, as we know, do not occur in justly organized and prosperous countries. N. Berdyaev also wrote about this, stating:
Revolution is a punishment sent from above for the sins of the past, a fatal consequence of an old evil... Revolution always indicates that those in power have not fulfilled their purpose.
By destroying rather than rebuilding the existing state system, old traditions, and the old way of life, revolutions invariably entail great sacrifices. However, by destroying a long-established, degenerate, and ineffective elite, they pave the way for talented individuals who had no chance of self-realization under the old regime. Therefore, revolutions lead not to a halt in the development of the state and society, but, on the contrary, to a leap forward, when a country, in a few years, traverses a path that took other states decades to follow.
One of these "new men" was Mikhail Frunze, born in the remote backwaters of the Russian Empire, the son of a military paramedic who died early and a peasant woman. It was thanks to the October Revolution that he became one of the most outstanding Soviet commanders and rose to the post of Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the USSR and People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs.
Let's start our story in order.
The origin and youth of the hero of the article
Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze was born on January 21 (February 2) in the then still very small town of Pishpek (Bishkek), which later became the capital of the Kyrgyz Republic (and for several decades bore the name of the article’s hero).
Frunze Memorial House, Bishkek
The subject's father was a native of the village of Zakharovka in the Kherson province. He managed to secure a place at the paramedic school at the Imperial Moscow Orphanage, after which he was sent to Turkestan, where he met his future wife, Mavra Efimovna Bochkareva. The daughter of Voronezh peasants, she was born in the Turkestan city of Tokmak, where her parents had moved. The family had eight children, but three died young. The family was never particularly prosperous, and after the death of its head, Vasily Frunze, they found themselves in near-destitution. They were forced to sell their house, but the money soon ran out, forcing the widow to ask the city authorities for an allowance to pay for her children's education. She wrote:
The eldest (Konstantin) is doing well in his studies, and the youngest (Mikhail, the subject of this article) is doing very well. Educating two sons in high school and two girls, Klavdia and Lyudmila, in girls' colleges requires considerable expense. My heart sinks at the thought that as a result of this (lack of funds), they may be left without the education so essential to every person's livelihood today.
The authorities came to their aid, funds were allocated, and Konstantin and Mikhail began studying at the gymnasium in the city of Verny (now Almaty).
High school student Mikhail Frunze
The allowance, however, was quite meager, so the brothers had to earn extra money as tutors, especially since they were doing well academically – both graduated from high school with gold medals. Konstantin continued his studies at the Faculty of Medicine at Kazan University. He subsequently received the titles of Honored Doctor of the Tajik SSR and Hero of Labor of the Tajik SSR. It's worth noting that the subject of this article's sister, Lyudmila, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War and a colonel in the medical service, also chose medical education. After the war, she worked at the Central Military Hospital.
Mikhail Frunze began studying at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute in 1904, where he became fascinated with revolutionary ideas. He took part in student protests, and on November 28, 1904, he was detained by police and jailed for 15 days. Cossacks had injured his knee, and he was unable to receive qualified medical care. There was no way to spare his leg or rest. The injury had consequences: Frunze suffered several recurrent knee dislocations during heavy loads and awkward movements.
On January 9, 1905, he took part in the march to the Winter Palace. After the shooting of this peaceful demonstration, the fall of the tsarist regime was only a matter of time.
Maximilian Voloshin wrote:
The bloody week in St. Petersburg was neither a revolution nor a day of revolution. What happened was far more important. The Russian government's motto, "Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Nationality," was laid to waste. The government rejected Orthodoxy because it gave the order to fire on icons and a religious procession. The government declared itself hostile to the people because it gave the order to fire on those who sought the protection of the Tsar. These days were merely a mystical prologue to a great national tragedy that had not yet begun.
Here is an entry in O. Mandelstam’s diary:
A child's cap, a mitten, a woman's scarf, abandoned on this day in the snow of St. Petersburg, remained a reminder that the Tsar must die, that the Tsar will die.
V. Kossak. "Bloody Sunday", 1905
Savva Morozov told Gorky about the events of January 9:
Now the revolution is assured... Years of propaganda would not have achieved what His Majesty himself achieved on this day.
Leo Tolstoy wrote on May 18, 1905:
The Tsar is considered a sacred person, but you have to be a fool, or an evil person, or a madman to do what Nicholas does.
Alexander Blok recalled how the last emperor’s favorite, Admiral Nilov, said a few steps away from him in a circle of courtiers:
There will be a revolution, we will all be hanged, but on what poles - what difference does it make?
M. Frunze was wounded in the right arm. It was then that he finally decided on his fate and wrote to his mother:
Dear Mom, you have a son, Kostya, and daughters. I hope they won't abandon you, but I think you should give up on me... The rivers of blood spilled on January 9th demand retribution. The die has been cast, the Rubicon has been crossed, the path has been determined. I give myself entirely to the revolution. Don't be surprised by any news about me.
He later said that it was the events of Bloody Sunday that made him a "general of the revolution."
Having ended up on the list of “unreliable” people, Mikhail Frunze was expelled from the capital and settled in Moscow.
Mikhail Frunze in Ivanovo-Voznesensk
At the beginning of May 1905, the hero of the article was sent to Ivanovo-Voznesensk (Ivanovo), which was then part of the Vladimir province.
M. Frunze in 1905
Here he took an active part in organizing a large-scale strike of workers in textile factories (he was known as “Comrade Arseny”).
This Ivanovo weavers' strike lasted 72 days—from May 12 to July 23, 1905. The strikes spread throughout the entire "chintz region"—the textile industrial region of Ivanovo-Voznesensk. In Shuya, for example, 20 people went on strike. Strikes were also organized in Kokhma, Kineshma, Vichuga, and Rodniki. The total number of protesters reached 70.
A fragment of E. Deshalyt's diorama "The General Strike of Ivanovo-Voznesensk Workers in May 1905"
These events were witnessed by 13-year-old Dmitry Furmanov, who later described them in his story “Talka”.
At first, purely economic demands were put forward, such as an eight-hour workday (instead of 15), higher wages, and the abolition of fines. Then political slogans emerged, demanding freedom of speech and the press, the right to form trade unions and organize strikes, and the convening of an all-Russian Constituent Assembly. Ivanovo factory owner D. Burylin wrote to an acquaintance:
An unprecedented scene, the workers are like animals. The management is at a loss. I'm without a coachman, I'm boiling the tea myself, the last watchman has been fired from the factory, I'm guarding the factory myself... I have it on good authority that the strike leaders are out-of-towners, educated. They're leading with a vengeance. A dual power structure is palpable in the city. The workers refuse to negotiate within their own factories; they're putting forward general demands.
It was then, on May 15, 1905, that the first citywide Council of Workers' Deputies in the Russian Empire was created, which acted precisely as an organ of revolutionary power.
Deputies of the Ivanovo-Voznesensk Council on the banks of the Talka River
A fighting squad was also created, headed by the 20-year-old Bolshevik I. Utkin (the same age as Frunze). Part weapons for the vigilantes was captured at the police station of the Vichura station, the hero of the article led this action.
It should be noted that this strike divided the factory workers: some were willing to admit that their exploitative methods had gone too far and that the situation should therefore be defused, negotiations with the strikers should be negotiated, and some of their demands should be met. But the majority, supported by the governor, demanded that the government brutally suppress the strike.
The first bloodshed occurred on June 3rd near the Talka River, where participants in a rally were shot at the traditional site of workers' meetings. The strike continued, the authorities made concessions, and the governor recognized the workers' right to hold meetings. Then, factory owner Gryaznov "wavered," announcing his agreement to a ten-hour workday and a wage increase of approximately 20-25%. Kashintsev and Shchapov were next to make concessions, followed by others. As a result, the average workday was to be reduced to 10,5 hours, the average wage was to increase by 10%, and certain benefits were promised to pregnant and nursing mothers. However, many factory owners soon "adjusted" these concessions to their own advantage.
Mikhail Frunze's further revolutionary career
Frunze's gendarme card with a description of his features, 1907, photograph from the M. Frunze Museum in Samara provided by S. Petrov
The next significant episode in the article's hero's revolutionary activities was the fighting at the Krasnaya Presnya barricades during the Moscow December Uprising. Here, he led a detachment of Shuya weavers who, in order to reach Moscow, seized a locomotive and two carriages. Near the Bolshoy Presnensky Bridge, they built the largest barricade in Moscow (up to 8 arshins high), which they held for several days. They then managed to return home.
In the spring of 1906, he was the youngest delegate to the Fourth Congress of the RSDLP in Stockholm. He met Lenin, Voroshilov, and Kalinin. He returned to Ivanovo-Voznesensk and in January 1907 organized a high-profile operation: leading a group of 17 armed revolutionaries, he seized Limonov's private printing house during the day, forcing its employees to print leaflets. He was elected a delegate to the Fifth Congress, but was arrested on the night of March 24, 1907. A Mauser, a Browning, and two carbines were found in his apartment. He apparently resisted arrest, as he was struck hard in the face with a rifle butt.
M. Frunze in 1907
Let's digress a bit to say that M. Bulgakov, in the libretto he wrote for the Bolshoi Theater for the opera "Black Sea" (about the liberation of Crimea occupied by Wrangel), which was never staged, portrays Frunze as the Red Army commander Mikhailov - and the play's hero has a dream-memory in which he is beaten with rifle butts in the Vladimir Central Prison.
Frunze was initially sentenced to four years of hard labor, but was later sentenced to death for his involvement in the assassination attempt on police officer Perlov. On death row, he spent two months studying Italian, comparing Russian and Italian Bible texts.
M. Frunze in Vladimir Central in January 1909 after being sentenced to death
However, thanks to the efforts of attorney A. Ern, State Duma deputy M. Chelnokov from the Constitutional Democrats, and professors from the Polytechnic Institute, his death sentence was commuted to six years of hard labor (taking into account the previous sentence of 10 years). Until 1914, he was held in the Vladimir, Aleksandrovskaya, and Nikolaevskaya penal prisons, then, due to health reasons (a stomach ulcer and suspected tuberculosis), he was sent to permanent settlement in the village of Manzurka in the Irkutsk region.
It should be noted that Frunze's stomach ulcers were accompanied by severe pain and were complicated several times by serious bleeding.
In August 1915, Frunze was arrested again, this time for founding an organization of exiles. However, he managed to escape to Chita and, using documents in the name of V. G. Vasilenko, found work in the statistics department of the resettlement administration. He wrote articles for the weekly newspaper "Zabaikalskoye Obozreniye."
M. Frunze in Chita
It was here that he married Sofya Alexandrovna Popova, the daughter of an exiled Narodnaya Volya member.
Frunze with his wife
In 1916, facing arrest, Frunze and his wife moved to Moscow, where a friend, the Mikhailov family, gave him the passport of their son, who had gone missing in the war. The Frunzes then moved to Minsk, where the subject of this article worked as a statistician for the All-Russian Zemstvo Union.
M. Frunze in 1916 in Minsk
On official business he often traveled to the front, creating regimental committees in various parts of the Western Front.
Mikhail Frunze after the February Revolution
On March 4, 1917, the hero of the article was appointed chief of the Minsk police by the leadership of the Zemsky Union – this day is currently a professional holiday for the republican police in Belarus.
Gomel, a monument dedicated to the centenary of the Belarusian police
On the night of March 4–5, 1917, with the support of garrison soldiers, he disarmed the imperial police and took control of the city with militia units. He soon received documents in his real name. In the summer of 1917, M.V. Frunze also became chairman of the executive committee of the Council of Peasants' Deputies of the Minsk and Vilnius Provinces, editor of two newspapers—Krestyanskaya and Zvyazda—a member of the Minsk City Committee of the RSDLP, the Soldiers' Committee of the Western Front, and the executive committee of the Minsk Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. But in September 1917, he was ordered to Shuya, where he was elected chairman of the Council of Workers', Peasants', and Soldiers' Deputies, the district zemstvo council, and the city duma.
But already in October, we find Frunze in Moscow, where the detachment he led (around two thousand men) fought against the opponents of the Bolsheviks. In March 1918, he was elected chairman of the Ivanovo-Voznesensk Provincial Executive Committee and the Provincial Economic Council. Interestingly, when the private museum of manufacturer Dmitry Burylin was nationalized, Frunze appointed the former owner as its director and left part of the house at his disposal. Today, it is the Ivanovo State Museum of History and Local Lore named after D. Burylin. The Burylin family home now houses the Ivanovo Chintz Museum.
In the next article, we will continue the story and discuss the beginning of Mikhail Frunze's military career.
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