Konstantin Ivanovich Rakutin (; – 7 October 1941) was a Red Army major general who served in World War II. A veteran of the Russian Civil War and Polish–Soviet War, Rakutin became an officer in the Border Troops during the interwar period, rising to chief of staff of the Leningrad Border District in the late 1930s. He was chief of the Baltic Border District when Operation Barbarossa, and was swiftly appointed commander of the 31st Army. Rakutin led the 24th Army in the costly but successful Yelnya Offensive during Operation Barbarossa, shortly before the Battle of Moscow. During the latter's first days he fell in combat. Rakutin was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union for his leadership during the offensive in 1990. Early life and Russian Civil War Rakutin was born on 3 June 1902 in the village of Novinki, Yakovtsevskoy volost, Vladimir Governorate. In 1917 he graduated from a realschule in Nizhny Novgorod and worked at the Nizhny Novgorod executive committee as a ledger clerk. He served in the Red Army from July 1919, graduating from the Tambov Infantry Courses for Red Commanders in December of that year. Appointed military commissar of the training school of the 9th Volga Regiment, Rakutin fought in the Russian Civil War on the Eastern Front against the forces of Alexander Kolchak. During the Polish–Soviet War he became an assistant company commander in the 473rd Rifle Regiment of the 53rd Rifle Division, fighting on the Western Front. Rakutin's unit was forced to retreat into East Prussia with the 4th Army by the Polish counteroffensive of August 1920 and in 1921 he returned to the Soviet Union from an internment camp there. Later that year, Rakutin fought against White and Japanese forces with the People's Revolutionary Army of the Far Eastern Republic, serving as a company commander of the 5th Chita Regiment. In February 1922 he distinguished himself in the storming of Volochayevka. Interwar period Rakutin transferred to the OGPU Border Troops after the end of the Russian Civil War in 1922, becoming political officer of the Amur Border Cavalry Squadron. He became commandant of a sector of the Bikin Border Detachment in 1924 and chief of the border commandant's service in Nikolayevsk-on-Amur in 1925. Appointed chief of the Separate Okhotsk Border Commandant's Service and simultaneous deputy chairman of the Okhotsky District Executive Committee in 1927, he distinguished himself in the suppression