Grulev Mikhail Vladimirovich (1857, Rezhitsa, Vitebsk Governorate – 1943, Nice, France) — military historian, Lieutenant General (1912).
Mikhail Grulev received a traditional Jewish education and completed district schooling in Sebezh. In 1878, he joined the army as a volunteer. In 1879, he converted to Orthodox Christianity. He graduated from the Warsaw Junker School and was commissioned as an officer in 1882. In 1888, he completed studies at the General Staff Academy, and in 1889 was appointed to the General Staff.
Grulev served in the Priamur and Turkestan military districts and undertook expeditions to India, Egypt, China, and Japan. He led a scientific expedition to Manchuria, where he conducted surveys essential for the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway and recommended the location for the foundation of the city of Harbin.
During the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), he commanded a regiment and later a division, distinguishing himself in battles on the Shahe River. From 1905 to 1907, he refused to participate in the suppression of revolutionary uprisings. Between 1907 and 1909, he served on the military-historical commission of the General Staff’s Main Directorate, contributing to the History of the Russo-Japanese War. From 1910, he was Chief of Staff of the Brest-Litovsk Fortress. In 1912, facing dismissal due to his politically radical writings, he resigned and settled in Nice.
Grulev began publishing in the late 1870s, including Hebrew-language poetry in the newspaper Ha-Tzfirah. From 1880 onward, he regularly contributed articles and essays on military affairs and his travels to Russian periodicals. He was editor of Turkestanskiye Vedomosti and News of the Turkestan Department of the Russian Geographical Society, and assistant editor of the military journal Razvedchik.
His most notable works include In Staff Headquarters and on the Fields of the Far East (vols. 1–2, 1908), and The Rivalry of Russia and Britain in Central Asia (1909), which was translated into German and English. Grulev’s interest in Jewish issues was evident in a series of articles on the Dreyfus Affair and in his essay National and Religious Questions in the Face of War (Russkiy Vestnik, 1905–07). He donated the proceeds from his memoirs, Memoirs of a Jewish General (1930), to the Jewish National Fund for land acquisition in Eretz Israel.