The son of a land surveyor and a member of the minor nobility, he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Surveying - and later from the General Staff Academy.

[2] He witnessed the Russian aviator Pyotr Nesterov's fatal aerial ramming attack on 25 August 1914 [O.S.]

[citation needed] After the German army captured Riga (3 September 1917) he was transferred to the northern front.

He was arrested again in February 1931, along with other former imperial army officers suspected of plotting against the Soviet regime, but was released without charge.

He survived the Stalinist purges, and was promoted to the rank of divisional commander as the mass arrests of Red Army officers began in 1937.