Nikolai Berzarin
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Nikolai Erastovich Berzarin (Russian Николай Эрастович Берзарин) (born April 1, 1904 in St. Petersburg, died June 16, 1945 in Berlin) was a Russian Red Army General, Hero of the Soviet Union (April 6, 1945).
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[edit] Family
Berzarin was born the son of a pipefitter and a seamstress. He had one brother and four sisters.
In 1925, he married bank employee Natalja Prosinjuk, with whom he had two daughters, Larissa and Irina.
[edit] Training
In 1918 Berzarin enlisted in the Red Army and fought against invading troops in Archangelsk. Between 1921 and 1923 he received more military training, and also participated in the suppression of the Kronstadt Rebellion. In 1922, he became a member of Komsomol. In 1923 he was assigned to Siberia.
In 1926, after officer training, he became a member of the CPSU.
[edit] Military career
In 1927 he returned to Siberia, where he commanded an officers training unit in Irkutsk. From 1933 to 1935, he served in the staff of the Far East Army; from 1935 to 1937 he led the 77th Infantry Regiment of the 26th Infantry Division of the Far East Army. Until 1938, he was the chief instructor of the Amur group.
During the Great Purge, he was accused of owing his career to the "enemies of the people", but was supported by various Communist Party members. As division commander, he repelled Japanese attacks at Lake Khasan, for which he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
After his appointment as major general, he was transferred at his own request to Riga, and became commander of the 27th Army, which fought against the German armed forces after their assault on the Soviet Union. From December 1941 to May 1944 he was Commander-in-Chief of several armies; he was badly wounded in March 1943 and was hospitalized for six months.
He was responsible for massive war crimes against the population of the Baltic countries, like the deportation of 40,000 Balts to Soviet concentration camps.
He received the Lenin medal and was promoted to colonel general for his success in breaking through German lines in the Battle of Romania (1944). After conquering Chişinău in August 1944, the Belorussian and Ukrainian fronts began their march on Berlin.
[edit] Commander of Berlin
Berzarin's army reached the outskirts of Berlin on April 21, 1945 as the first Soviet force. On April 24, he was appointed commander of the city by Marshall Zhukov.
Like every other Allied commander, he worked to re-establish order, creating a city police force and supplying the population with food. He appointed the first postwar municipal authorities and strove for a revival of the cultural life of the city.
On June 16, 1945 he died in a motorcycle accident in a truck convoy in Berlin.
[edit] Honored citizen of Berlin
In 1975 the regime of the German Democratic Republic made him citizen of honour of East Berlin. He was formally removed from the list of citizens of honour by the city government in 1992 because of his record as a war criminal. However, 2003, causing an uproar by some German parties and people concerned with human rights in Germany and the Baltic countries. In 2005 Thomas Flierl of the PDS also named a bridge after Berzarin.
