Ivan Semenovich Kutiakov

Born Jan. 6 (18), 1897, in the village of Krasnaia Rechka, Nikolaevskii District, Samara Province, now Kuibyshev Oblast; died Sept. 23, 1942. Soviet military commander; corps commander (1935). Member of the CPSU from 1917. Son of a peasant.

Kutiakov was drafted into the army in 1916. He was a junior noncommissioned officer and chairman of a regiment committee. He was a delegate to the Second All-Russian Congress of Peasants’ Deputies (1917) and the elected commander and commissar of the 20th Turkestan Rifle Regiment. Demobilized in early 1918, Kutiakov became chairman of a volost (small rural district) revolutionary committee and formed a Red Guard detachment, which was incorporated into the Second Sten’ka Razin Rifle Regiment, commanded by V. I. Chapaev. He took command of the 73rd Brigade of the 25th Rifle Division in October 1918. After Chapaev’s death Kutiakov commanded the 25th Division from Sept. 6, 1919, to October 1920. After graduating from the Military Academy in 1923, he was a division and corps commander. He was deputy commander of the troops of the Volga Military District in 1936–37. Kutiakov was awarded three Orders of the Red Banner.