After the Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, began on 22 June 1941, he became an armor officer in the Red Army.

[1] After the beginning of World War I, Rudkin was conscripted into the Russian Imperial Army in October 1915, serving in the 16th Siberian Reserve Battalion.

He was sent to the Western Front in February 1917, serving as a private in the 138th Infantry Division's 551st Veliky Ustyug Regiment on the Dvinsk line.

[2] Rudkin actively participated in the Russian Revolution, and in November 1917 he was elected commander and commissar of his division as the Imperial Army dissolved.

From June 1919, he was assistant to the Extraordinary Military Commissar of the Western Front, fighting in battles against Nikolai Yudenich's White Army.

For many years after the end of the Civil War, he successively served as inspector of the Cheka, OGPU, and NKVD troops in Moscow.

[1][3] In September 1941, Rudkin was appointed a department head in the automobile and tank directorate of the Karelian Front, fighting in World War II.

On 31 March, he received the title Hero of the Soviet Union and the Order of Lenin for his leadership,[4][3] and was promoted to major general on 7 June.

Although the 47th Army's attack made little progress, the corps was still sent into combat, due to the Soviet assumption that the German troops were still retreating, along with a lack of reconnaissance.

[9] In August, he became deputy commander of the armored and mechanized forces of the 3rd Belorussian Front, fighting in the Gumbinnen Operation and the East Prussian Offensive.