Berens, Evgenii Andreevich

Berens, Evgenii Andreevich 

Born Oct. 30 (Nov. 11), 1876, in Tiflis; died Apr. 7, 1928, in Moscow. Soviet naval figure. Born into a dvorianstvo (nobility or gentry) family.

Berens graduated from the Naval School in 1895. He fought in the Russo-Japanese War on the cruiser Variag. He was a naval attaché to Germany during 1910–14 and to Italy in 1915–17. From June 1917 he was chief of the foreign affairs department of the Naval General Staff with the rank of captain first class. After the October Revolution he went over to the Soviet power. In November 1917 he became chief of the Naval General Staff and in April 1919, commander of the republic’s naval forces. In 1920–24 he was on especially important assignments with the republic Revolutionary Military Council and was a member of the Soviet delegation at the conclusion of the peace treaty with Finland, and then at the Genoa and Lausanne conferences. He was appointed naval attaché to Great Britain in 1924 and to France in 1925. In 1927 he was the naval expert on the commission on the reductions of armaments in Geneva.