Stefan Akimovich Krasovskii

Born Aug. 8 (20), 1897, in the village of Glukhi, now in Bykhov Raion, Mogilev Oblast. Soviet military leader; marshal of aviation (1959); Hero of the Soviet Union (May 29, 1945); professor (1966). Member of the CPSU from 1918.

Krasovskii entered the army in 1916 as a private and rose to become a noncommissioned officer. In 1918 he joined the Red Army and took part in the Civil War of 1918–20 (as an aircraft mechanic and military commissar of an air detachment). In 1927 he graduated from the Advanced Training School for Air Force Command Personnel; in 1936 he graduated from the N. E. Zhukov Air Force Engineering Academy. He commanded an air brigade, a corps, and an air region of a military district. During the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939–40 he commanded an air brigade. In 1940 he was head of an aviation school and deputy air force commander, and then air force commander, of a military district.

In the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45 he took part in the fighting on various fronts and held the positions of commander of air forces of the Fifty-sixth Army (1941–42), commander of air forces of the Briansk Front (1942), commander of the Second Air Army (May-October 1942), commander of the Seventeenth Air Army (October 1942-March 1943), and then again commander of the Second Air Army (from March 1943 until the end of the war). During 1956–68 he served as head of the lu. A. Gagarin Air Force Academy. Since 1968 he has held a responsible post in the Ministry of Defense. He is the author of the book Life in Aviation (1960 and 1968). Krasovskii has been awarded six Orders of Lenin, three Orders of the Red Banner, the Orders of Suvorov First and Second Class, the Order of Kutuzov First Class, the Order of Bogdan Khmel’nitskii First Class, the Red Star, and various medals, as well as four orders from foreign nations.