Stepan Povetkin

Stepan Ivanovich Povetkin (; 15 August 1895 – 1 May 1965) was a Red Army lieutenant general.

Conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army during World War I, Povetkin rose from private to ensign during the war. Joining the Red Army during the Russian Civil War, he served as a junior commander and held command positions stationed in the North Caucasus during the 1920s and early 1930s. Povetkin rose to division and then corps command by the late 1930s. At the outbreak of Operation Barbarossa he commanded the 47th Rifle Corps in Belarus and was severely wounded in the first month of the war. He returned to the front in late 1941 as an army deputy commander and in 1942–1943 commanded a corps before becoming deputy commander of the Belorussian Military District. Relieved of this post in early 1945 for drunkenness and neglecting his duties, he briefly returned to the front as a corps deputy commander and retired shortly after the end of the war.

Early life, World War I, and Russian Civil War Born to a peasant family on 15 August 1895 in the village of Russkaya Zhuravka, Pavlovsky Uyezd, Voronezh Governorate, Povetkin completed primary school. Conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army in 1915 during World War I, he was sent to the 9th Infantry Regiment on the Southwestern Front as a ryadovoy. Graduating from the regimental training detachment in 1916, Povetkin served successively as a squad leader, platoon leader, and company commander, rising to the rank of praporshchik.

After being demobilized, in February 1918, Povetkin became a platoon leader in the Red Guard detachment of the liquidation commission in Kaluga. Joining the Red Army in May 1918 during the Russian Civil War, he became a pre-conscription training instructor at the Zhuravsky District Military Commissariat. Serving there for more than a year, Povetkin was sent to a combat unit in April 1919, serving as a junior commander in the separate sapper company of the Boguchar Rifle Regiment on the Southern Front. he led it in the Spas-Demensk Offensive and the Yelnya–Dorogobuzh Offensive during the Second Battle of Smolensk.

Povetkin served as deputy commander for the troops of the Belorussian Military District from November 1943. He was relieved of his post on 27 February 1945 by a directive of the People's Commissar of Defense, charged with habitual drunkenness, drinking with subordinates, and shirking his responsibility of supervising combat training in the district. After being at the disposal of the Main Personnel Directorate for several weeks, he was appointed deputy commander of the 38th Guards Rifle Corps of the 9th Guards Army in April. In the final stages of the war he fought with the corps in the Vienna Offensive and the Prague Offensive, ending the war on the Elbe.

Postwar After the end of the war, Povetkin continued as deputy commander of the 38th Guards Rifle Corps. He was discharged from active duty in August 1946, and died in Moscow on 1 May 1965.

Awards and honors Povetkin was a recipient of the following decorations:

Order of Lenin (2) Order of the Red Banner Order of Suvorov, 2nd class Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class