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Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich (Kogan) (Template:Lang-ru) (November 22, 1893–July 25, 1991) was a Soviet politician and a close associate of Joseph Stalin.

Beginning

Kaganovich was born in 1893 to Jewish parents in the village of Kabany, Radomyshl uyezd, Kiev Guberniya, Russian Empire (now in Ukraine). For most of his life, he was a staunch atheist. Never receiving a formal education, he was self taught and worked as a shoe repairman.

In 1911, he joined the Bolshevik party (following his older brother Mikhail Kaganovich who was already a member). Later in 1915, Kaganovich was arrested and sent to his Kabany village. In March-April 1917, he was the Chairman of Tanners Union and the vice-chairman of the Yuzovka Soviet. Since May of 1917, he was the leader of the miltary organization of Bolsheviks in Saratov. In August of 1917, he became the leader of Polessky Committe of the Bolshevik party in Belarus. During the October Revolution, he was the leader of the revolt in Gomel.

Communist functioner

In 1918, Kaganovich was the Commissar of the propaganda department of the Red Army. In May 1918 - August 1919, he was the Chairman of Ispolkom of Nizhny Novgorod gubernia. In 1919-1920, he was leader of Voronezh gubernia. From 1920 to 1922, he was in Turkmenistan, where he was one of the leaders in the Bolshevik fight against local Muslim rebels (basmaches) and the following punitive expeditions against the local opposition.

In May of 1922, Stalin became the General Secretary of the Communist Party and immediately transferred Kaganovich to his apparatus to head the Organizational Department of the Secretariat. The department was responsible for all the assignments within the apparatus of the Communist Party. Working there, Kaganovich helped to put Stalin's supporters to key positions within the Communist Party bureaucracy. In his position, he was noted by his high working capacity, personal loyalty to Stalin, and the total lack of his own opinions. He publicly stated that he would execute absolutely any order from Stalin, which at that time was a novelty.

In 1924, Kaganovich became a member of the Central Committee. From 1925 to 1928, Kaganovich was the First Secretary of Communist Party of Ukrainian SSR. There, he was noted for his rigid policy of economic suppression of the kulak's (richer peasant) and his staunch opposition to the more moderate policy of Nikolai Bukharin who insisted on peaceful integration of kulaks into socialism. During his tenure as the leader of Ukrainian SSR, the policy of Ukrainization was changed to Russification, many communist officials were purged as "Ukrainian Nationalists". In 1928 due to the numerous protests against Kaganovich's leadership, Stalin was forced to transfer Kaganovich from Ukraine to Moscow, where he returned to his role as a Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (until 1939). As a Secretary, he helped Stalin in his fight against the so called Left and Right oppositions within the Communist Party to become the sole leader of the country.

In 1930, Kaganovich became a member of the Soviet Politburo and the First Secretary of the Moscow Oblast Committe of Communist Party (1930-1935) and Moscow City Committe of Communist Party (1931-1934). He also supervised the implementation of many of Stalin's economic policies, including the collectivization of agriculture and rapid industrialization.

In the 1930's, Kaganovich organized and greatly contributed to the building of the first Soviet metro system in Moscow, which was named after him until 1955. During this period, he also oversaw the destruction of many of the city's oldest monuments including the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. In 1932, he led the ruthless suppression of the workers' strike in Ivanovo-Voznesensk.

Responsibility for Holodomor

Kaganovich (together with Vyacheslav Molotov) took part in the All-Ukrainian Party Conference of 1930 and actively encouraged the politics of collectivization there that led to the catastrophic 1932-33 Ukrainian famine or Holodomor in which millions of Ukrainians died. Similar policies also inflicted enormous suffering on the Soviet Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan, Kuban region, Crimea, lower Volga region, and in other parts of the Soviet Union. As an emissary of the Central Comittee of the Communist Party, Kaganovich traveled to the Ukraine, Central region of Russia, Northern Caucasus, and Siberia demanding the acceleration of collectivization and repressions against the kulaks and their supporters. E.g. he pressed the Northern Caucasian leadership to completely exile the entire populations of three Kuban stanitsas: Poltavskaya, Medvedkovskaya, and Urupskaya (45 thousand people in total). In his book, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivisation and the Terror-Famine, Robert Conquest named Kaganovich together with Molotov, Pavel Postyshev and other lieutenants of Stalin as having personal responsibilities for the famines.

"Iron Lazar"

In 1935-1937, Kaganovich worked as Narkom (minister) for the railroads. Even before the start of Great Purge he organized arrests of thousands of railroad administartors and managers as saboteurs.

In 1937-1939, he was the Narkom for the Heavy Industry". In 1939-1940, he served as the Narkom for the Oil Industry. Everywhere his assignment was connected with arrests in order to improve the discipline. In all Party conferences of the later 1930's, he made speeches demanding to step up the search and persecution of "foreign spies" and "saboteurs". For his ruthlessness in the execution of Stalin's orders, he got the nickname Iron Lazar.

During the Great Patriotic War, Kaganovich held the position of the Commissar (Member of the Military Council) of the North Caucasian and Transcaucasian Fronts. In 1943-1944, he was again the Narkom for the railroads, From 1944 to 1947, he was the Minister for Building Materials. In 1947, he became the First Secretary of Ukrainian Communist Party. In the time period of 1948-1952, he served as the Chief of Gossnab and in 1952-1957, the First Vice-Premier of the Council of Ministries.

Kaganovich was, until 1957, a full member of the Politburo and the Presidium. He was also an early mentor of Nikita Khrushchev, who first rose to prominence as his Moscow City deputy in the 1930s. In 1947, when Khrushchev was stripped of the Party leadership in Ukraine (he remained in the somewhat lesser head of government job), Stalin dispatched Kaganovich to replace him until the former was reinstated late that year.

Kaganovich was a rigid Stalinist, and though he remained in the Presidium, quickly lost influence after Stalin's death in March 1953. In 1957, along with fellow hard-line Stalinists Vyacheslav Molotov, Kliment Voroshilov, and Georgy Malenkov (the so-called Anti-Party Group), he participated in an abortive party coup against his former protege Khrushchev, who had over the preceding two years become increasingly harsh in his criticism of Stalin. As a result, Kaganovich was forced to retire from the Presidium and the Central Committee, and in 1964 he was expelled from the party.

In 1987, a book titled "The Wolf of the Kremlin: The First Biography of L.M. Kaganvich, the Soviet Union's Architect of Fear" was written by American journalist Stuart Kahan, in which Kahan claims to be a long lost nephew of Kaganovich. Kahan also claimed to have interviewed Kaganovich during a previous visit to Moscow, in which interview he alleges Kaganovich admitted to being partially responsible for the death of Stalin in 1953 (via poisoning). A number of other claims were made as well. The truth of all of these allegations have been brought into question by a letter, Statement of the Kaganovich Family, written by Kaganovich's surviving family members (including his daughter) in which they state that these claims are all false.

Kaganovich survived to the age of 97, dying just before the events that led to the final unravelling of the Soviet Union in 1991. In an interview given during his last years, he qualified the rule of Gorbachev as a direct destruction of the state.

Trivia

In 1944, the newly launched light cruiser of the project 26-bis was named after Lazar Kaganovich. It entered the Soviet Pacific Fleet in December 1944.

References

• Kaganovich bio at Khronos

• Soviet politicians
• 1893 births
• 1991 deaths
• History of the Soviet Union and Soviet Russia
• Russian Jews