Born in 1900 in Saint Petersburg, Tributs joined the Navy in 1918 and during the Russian Civil War participated in combat actions on the Volga and in the Caspian.

From 1932 to 1936 he served on ships of the Baltic Fleet (the battleships Parizhskaya Kommuna and Marat) and commanded the destroyer Yakov Sverdlov.

As war approached, Tributs observed the growing evidence of hostile German activity with apprehension; in the summer of 1940, he "advanced Baltic Fleet headquarters from its historic seat at the Kronstadt fortress in Leningrad to the port of Tallinn, two hundred miles to the west" despite his worries about security problems and the difficulty of constructing a new base.

2" state, which meant fueling the ships and putting their crews on alert, and late on the evening of June 21 (the eve of the German invasion) he moved to "Readiness No.

[3] A leading navy commander during the Siege of Leningrad, Tributs led the Soviet evacuation of Tallinn, organized military operations in defense of the ports of Kronstadt and Oranienbaum during 1941-1943, and arranged counterattacks by naval aircraft of the Baltic Fleet defending Leningrad from aerial bombing attacks.