Rifle Division's 34th Rifle Regiment in the Siberian Military District. In September 1925, he entered the Vystrel Officers Improvement Course, graduating in October 1926, and in March 1930 was transferred to become a Vystrel tactics instructor himself. Pukhov then transferred to the Red Army's new and growing mechanized forces, and became assistant chief of the 1st Department of the Red Army Auto-Armored Division in July 1932. He was sent to Officers Technical Improvement Academic Courses at the Military Academy of Motorization and Mechanization in March 1934 and graduated in January 1935, becoming senior head of the tactics department there following graduation. Pukhov was made a Colonel in December after the Red Army re-introduced regular military ranks. In July 1936, Pukhov became assistant chief in charge of training at the Gorky Armored School, which moved to Kharkov in March 1938. At Kharkov, he became the head of the school. In April 1939, Pukhov transferred to become an instructor at the Red Army Military-Economic Academy, and was promoted to Kombrig in April 1940. He became a Major General on 4 June when the Red Army reintroduced generals' ranks. That year he received the academic title of assistant in the tactics department. In January 1941 Pukhov became chief of the Training Department of the Military Quartermaster Academy after it was renamed from the Military-Economic Academy. World War II On August 28, 1941, more than two months after Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union began, Pukhov was ordered to replace the commander of the 38th Army's 304th Rifle Division; this was his first field command since the rifle regiment about 15 years earlier. At the beginning of September it was transferred to the Kozelshchyna area, where until September 17 it suffered heavy losses in heavy defensive fighting, retreating east to the area of Sanzhery, Reshetylivka, and Poltava. The 304th then fought in the Donbass Defensive Operation during October, then was withdrawn to the reserve in the Snezhny Kut area. Pukhov held this position until January 20, 1942, when he was given command of the 13th Army, which he held until mid-1946. Until the middle of 1942 the army, part of the Bryansk Front, held defensive positions on the line of Skorodnoye and Kolpny. The army fought in the Battle of Voronezh in mid-1942 and the Voronezh-Kastornensk offensive operation in early 1943. On 14 February, following the latter, Pukhov was promoted to