page_title: Mikhail Frunze
section_title: Death
hierarchical_section_title: Mikhail Frunze / Death
caption_attribution_description: English: Identified on the photo please see annotations: Alexei Rykov, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (Prime Minister). Lev Kamenev, Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (Deputy Prime Minister). Grigory Zinoviev, Chairman of the Comintern's Executive Committee. Mikhail Kalinin, Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets. Avel Enukidze, Secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union. Valerian Kuybyshev, First Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union. Yemelyan Yaroslavsky, founder of the League of Militant Atheists. Józef Unszlicht, Deputy People's Commissar on Military and Naval Affairs. Klim Voroshilov, Commander of Moscow Military District. Semyon Budyonny, Head of Cavalry Red Army. Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Deputy People's Commissar on Military and Naval Affairs. Andrei Bubnov, Head of the Political Directorate of the Red Workers' and Peasants' Army. Nikolai Bukharin, Editor of Pravda. Mikhail Tomsky, Chairman of the Presidium of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions.
context_page_description: Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze was a Bolshevik leader during and just prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Frunze was born in modern-day Kyrgyzstan. He became active with the Bolsheviks and rose to the rank of a major Red Army commander in the Russian Civil War of 1917-1918. He is best known for defeating Baron Peter von Wrangel in Crimea. The capital of the Kyrghyz SSR was named in his honor from 1926 until 1991, when the Soviet Union was dissolved.
context_section_description: Frunze had been noted among communist leaders as possessing a very creative and almost unorthodox view on matters of implementation and policy. He gained the respect and admiration of his comrades thanks to his fearless and successful pursuit of complicated military objectives, and his endurance during the period when the Communist party was illegal. He had been considered as a potential successor to Lenin, due to his strength in both theoretical and practical matters of advancing the Communist party agenda, and his seeming lack of personal ambition separate from the party.
  Frunze suffered from a chronic ulcer. Although doctors recommended surgery, he favoured more conservative treatments. After an especially severe episode in 1925, Frunze was hospitalised. Stalin and Anastas Mikoyan both came to visit him, and impressed on him the need for an operation.
  Not long before his death, Frunze wrote to his wife:  "At present I am feeling absolutely healthy, and it seems ridiculous to even think of, and even more-so to undergo an operation. Nevertheless, both party representatives are requiring it."
  Frunze died during surgery on 31 October 1925. Given the internecine politics, there were rumours that Stalin or another rival had secretly ordered his death. While V. Topolyansky, in his 2006 book, said there is no evidence to support this, a 26 October 2010 article in Izvestiya reported that Frunze had been administered a chloroform dose that exceeded the normal dose by sevenfold.
  Frunze was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
caption: Mikhail Frunze funeral 3 November 1925
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