Rodin, Aleksei

Born Feb. 4 (17), 1902, in the village of Zuevo, now in Ostashkov Raion, Kalinin Oblast; died May 27, 1955, in Moscow. Soviet military leader, colonel general of the tank troops (1944). Hero of the Soviet Union (Feb. 7, 1943). Member of the CPSU from 1926. Son of a peasant.

Rodin joined the Red Army in 1920. He graduated from the Military Academy of Mechanization and Motorization of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army in 1937 and the Higher Academic Training Courses at the Military Academy of the General Staff in 1953. During the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45 he was deputy commander of a tank division and commander of a tank brigade in 1941–42; deputy commander of the Fifty-fourth Army in charge of the tank troops in 1942; commander of a tank corps in 1942–43; commander of the Second Tank Army in 1943 on the Leningrad, Volkhov, Stalingrad, and Central fronts; and commander of the armored and mechanized troops of the Western and Third Byelorussian fronts from 1943 to 1945.

After the war, Rodin was commander of the armored and mechanized troops of a number of military districts from 1945 to 1949 and chief of the directorate of combat training of the armored and mechanized troops from 1949 to 1953. In 1954 he went into the reserve.

Rodin was awarded two Orders of Lenin, three Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of Suvorov First and Second Class, the Order of Kutuzov First Class, the Order of the Patriotic War First Class, and various medals.