Mikhail Frunze

Born in Russian Turkestan in 1885 to a Romanian father and Russian mother, Frunze joined the Bolsheviks after studying at Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University. He led textile strikes during the 1905 Revolution, was sentenced to death, then saw it commuted to hard labor in Siberia - from which he escaped a decade later. He fought in both the February and October Revolutions of 1917, but made his name in the Civil War, delivering decisive victories over Pyotr Wrangel's White Army in Crimea and Nestor Makhno's anarchist movement in Ukraine. By 1921 he sat on the Communist Party Central Committee; in 1925 he became chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council. That same year he died from chloroform poisoning during surgery for a chronic ulcer - an operation many believe Stalin arranged. His birthplace, Pishpek, became Frunze until 1991.