Aleksei Aleksandrovich Grechkin

Aleksei Aleksandrovich Grechkin (, 26 March 1893 – 30 August 1964) was a Soviet army commander.

After serving in World War I as an Imperial Russian Army officer, Grechkin joined the Red Army in 1918 and fought in the Russian Civil War. He rose through the ranks in the interwar period and commanded a division in the Winter War. After the Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Grechkin temporarily commanded the North Caucasus Military District, and as commander of the 56th Army operational group, led troops in the Battle of Rostov. He commanded the 9th Army and the 28th Army in 1943 and was deputy commander of the 3rd Baltic Front in the summer of 1943. After the war, Grechkin successively commanded two rifle corps and the Vystrel commander improvement courses before his 1954 retirement.

Early life, World War I, and Russian Civil War Grechkin was born on 26 March 1893 in the village of Karpenka, Novouzensky Uyezd in Samara Governorate (now Krasnokutsky District, Saratov Oblast). In 1910, he graduated from a teacher's school in Dyakovka, after which Grechkin worked as a teacher. In 1914, after the beginning of World War I, Grechkin was drafted into the Imperial Russian Army, serving in the reserve battalion of the Lifeguard Izmaylovsky Regiment. At the end of May 1915, he entered the 3rd Petrograd School of Praporshchiks, graduating in August. Grechkin was promoted to praporshchik and sent to the Western Front, where he served with the 57th Infantry Division's 228th Zadonsk Infantry Regiment, involved in heavy fighting in the Osowiec Fortress area. He was later transferred with the regiment to the Romanian Front and then the Southwestern Front, where Grechkin participated in fighting in the area of the Stokhid River. He became a company commander, was elected battalion commander, and promoted to staff captain. After the Russian Revolution Grechkin became a member of the regimental committee but returned to teaching after the army's collapse.

Grechkin joined the Red Army in August 1918 and was appointed assistant commissar of the staff of the Don Soviet Republic. He subsequently fought on the Southern Front of the Russian Civil War as a battalion commander, chief of defense of Morshansky Uyezd, and commander of the reserve regiment of the 9th Kuban Army. He fought in battles with the White Army 4th Don Cavalry Corps, the elimination of Sergei Ulagay's landing force, and the suppression of partisans in the Kuban. as part of the Tartu Offensive. He subsequently participated in the Riga Offensive. In October, the front was disbanded and Grechkin was placed at the disposal of the Main Personnel Directorate of the People's Commissariat of Defense. In April he was placed at the disposal of the 1st Ukrainian Front's military council, and at the end of the war Grechkin took command of the front's 48th Rifle Corps. 5 August 1944 ) Order of Kutuzov, 1st class Order of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, 1st class (19 March 1944) Order of Suvorov, 2nd class (6 May 1945)