Andrei Berzin

In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Gasparovich and the family name is Berzin.

Andrei Gasparovich Berzin (Russian: Андрей Гаспарович Берзин, Latvian: Andrejs Bērziņš; January 23, 1893, Majorenhof, Governorate of Livonia — 1951, Latvian SSR) was a Soviet politician.

Andrei Berzin
Andrejs Bērziņš
Born	(1893-01-21)21 January 1893 Majorenhof, Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire
Died	1951 (aged 57–58) Latvian SSR, USSR
Nationality	Latvian
Academic career
School or tradition	Marxian economics

After the Russian Civil War Berzin remained in Soviet Russia, where he worked as deputy head of the administrative and financial department of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture.

In 1930, along with other economists Nikolai Kondratiev, Alexander Chayanov and Lev Litoshenko he was arrested by Cheka in the case of the so-called Labor Peasant Party. In 1931, Berzin was exiled to Kazakhstan, where he worked as an economist-planner at Soyuzpromkorm.

In 1938, during the Latvian Operation of the NKVD Berzin was arrested again and imprisoned in a Gulag correctional labour camp until the end of World War II, after which he was released and allowed to return to Moscow.

First husband of actress Lyubov Orlova (1926—1930). After the arrest, the actress did not know anything about his fate. According to the biographers, while already being a wife of Grigory Alexandrov, she had asked Stalin to find out about Berzin and help him.

Berzin died in 1951 from cancer in Latvia, where he was living with his relatives.