 His family relocated to the village of Shumikha in the Kurgan Oblast in 1914 due to the start of the First World War.There, after completing his seventh grade of school in 1927, he began working at a railway station; but he soon moved to Zlatoust in Chelyabinsk to attend law school and work as a mechanic.He entered the military in 1931, and joined the communist party that year.