Evert, Aleksei

Evert, Aleksei Ermolaevich 

Born Feb. 20 (Mar. 4), 1857; died May 10,1926, in Vereia. Russian general of the infantry (1911).

Evert graduated from the Alexander Military School in 1876 and the Academy of the General Staff in 1882. He fought in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 he became quartermaster general of the field staff in the Far East in October 1904 and chief of the field staff of the First Manchurian Army in March 1905.

Between 1906 and 1908, Evert was chief of the Main Headquarters and then a corps commander, and between 1912 and 1914 he served as commander of the Irkutsk Military District and as appointed ataman of the Transbaikal Cossack Host. Evert was appointed commander of the Fourth Army in August 1914, replacing General A. E. Zal’ts, and fought in the battle of Galicia (1914). He became commander in chief of the armies of the Western Front in August 1915. His incompetence as a military leader and his extreme indecisiveness were particularly apparent during the front’s summer offensive in 1916 along the Vil’na (Vilnius) axis and in the vicinity of Baranovichi. Evert retired in March 1917, after the February Revolution, and lived in Smolensk and then Vereia, where he engaged in beekeeping.