Nikolai Berzarin

Nikolai Erastovich Berzarin (Russian: Никола́й Эра́стович Берза́рин; 1 April 1904 – 16 June 1945) was a Soviet military officer who held field army commands during World War II. A Hero of the Soviet Union, in 1945 he became the first commandant of the Soviet occupying forces in Berlin.

Early life and Russian Civil War Nikolai Erastovich Berzarin was born in Saint Petersburg on 1 April 1904, the son of Ernests Bērzzariņš (Ernst Berzzarin), a Latvian Putilov Factory lathe operator and a seamstress. He had one brother and three sisters. Although some authors describe Berzarin as being Latvian, he himself did not consider himself as such. In 1913 he began night courses at the city primary school, completing these in 1914 with the specialty of bookbinder. Berzarin worked as an unskilled laborer at the Saint Petersburg harbor. His father died in 1917, followed by his mother in 1918.

Berzarin joined the Red Army on 14 October 1918, beginning his service as a Red Army man in the 17th Petrograd Army Combat Sector. During the Russian Civil War he fought on the Northern Front against Allied troops in Arkhangelsk and in the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion.

Upon his recovery, Berzarin was returned to army command, taking over the 39th Army in September. He led the army as part of the 1st Baltic and 3rd Belorussian Fronts in the Smolensk operation and the winter offensive battles of 1943 and 1944 near Vitebsk.

From 1947 until 1991, Petersburger Straße in Berlin-Friedrichshain, a section of the Inner Ring Road, was named Bersarinstraße in his honour, the Bersarinplatz roundabout bears his name up to today. In April 2005, a road bridge in Berlin-Marzahn was named after Berzarin, in the area where his army reached the Berlin city limits in 1945. A birch tree planted in 2005 and a memorial stone mark the (presumed) site of his motorcycle accident.