GRULËV, MIKHAIL VLADIMIROVICH

GRULËV, MIKHAIL VLADIMIROVICH (1857–?), Russian general, publicist, and military historian. In 1878 he volunteered for the Krasnoyarsk regiment and the following year converted to Russian Orthodoxy, after which he enrolled in the Warsaw Military Academy, from which he emerged as an officer in 1882. In 1889 he became a member of the General Staff. He served on missions to India, Egypt, China, and Japan and headed a scientific expedition to Manchuria which recommended a site for establishing the city of Harbin. During the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) Grulëv commanded a regiment (and subsequently a division) during battles at the Shakhe River. A liberal by conviction, he refused to take part in the suppression of the revolutionary uprisings in 1905–07. From 1907 to 1909, when he had already attained the rank of general, he worked with the military-historical commission attached to the main directorate of the general staff in compiling the official history of the Russo-Japanese War (he was responsible for the two volumes on the operations at the Shakhe River). From 1910 he was commander of the Brest-Litovsk fortress. In 1912, following threats from the authorities, he was removed from his post in a disciplinary measure for the expression of radical views in the press. Grulëv handed in his resignation on grounds of "health" and retired to Nice (France), where he died.

His over 20 books and writings began with a poem written in Hebrew in the late 1870s and published in the newspaper Ha-Ẓefirah and included articles about the Dreyfus Affair, and a series of articles (1905–07) which revealed his interest in the position of the Jewish people. In the book Zapiski generalaevreya ("Notes of a Jewish General," Paris, 1930), Grulëv castigated antisemitism, and expressed his love and sympathy for the "long-suffering Jewish people." He donated the proceeds from this book to the *Jewish National Fund.

[Mark Kipnis /

The Shorter Jewish Encylopaedia in Russian]