Nikolay Pukhov

Nikolay Pavlovich Pukhov (; –March 28, 1958) was a Soviet Army colonel general and a Hero of the Soviet Union who commanded troops during World War II. Pukhov fought in World War I as a junior officer, afterwards joining the Red Army and fighting in the Russian Civil War, rising to become chief of staff of a division. During the interwar period he served as an instructor at several military academies, and following the Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, he was given command of the 304th Rifle Division. In January 1942 Pukhov was promoted to command the 13th Army, which he led for the rest of the war. He was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union for his leadership of the army during the Battle of the Dnieper in September and October 1943. Postwar, Pukhov commanded the 8th Tank Army and several military districts before becoming the head Soviet advisor to the Romanian People's Army, the last position he held before his death. Early life and World War I Pukhov was born on January 25, 1895, in the village of Grishovo in Kaluga Governorate. The son of an official, he graduated from the Kaluga Theological Seminary in 1915. He enrolled in the Moscow University but did not attend it, working as a history and literature teacher at the higher primary school in the village of Plokhino in Zhizdrinsky Uyezd of Kaluga Governorate from October, before being mobilized for service in the Imperial Russian Army in April 1916. He was sent to the 2nd Peterhof School of Praporshchiks, receiving the rank of Praporshchik upon graduation in October. Pukhov became a junior officer in the 163rd Reserve Infantry Regiment, stationed in Chelyabinsk. He was sent into combat on the Northern Front in June 1917 as a junior officer in the 186th Infantry Division's 744th Keidan Infantry Regiment. He served as chief of horse reconnaissance and intelligence for about two months but was gassed in the Battle of Riga near Ikšķile in August. In January 1918, Pukhov was demobilized with the rank of Praporshchik. Russian Civil War Pukhov joined the Red Guards in February 1918 at Liski as an adjutant in the headquarters for formation of Red Guard detachments, who conducted forced requisitioning in Voronezh Governorate and fought anti-Soviet forces.