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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.
He was born in 1893 to ethnically 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. Kaganovich never received a formal education, he was self taught and worked as a shoe repairman. In 1911 he joined the Bolshevik party, and in 1924 became a member of the Central Committee. In 1925-1928 Kaganovich was the First Secretary of Communist Party of Ukrainian SSR.
In 1930, he became a member of the Soviet Politburo and the First Secretary of the Moscow Oblast Communist Party. He also supervised the implementation of many of Stalin's economic policies, including the collectivization of agriculture and rapid industrialization. Kaganovich organized and greatly contributed to the building of the first Soviet metro system in Moscow, which was named after him until 1955. At that time he also oversaw the destruction of many of the city's oldest monuments including the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.
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 catastrophically 1932-33 Ukrainian famine or Holodomor in which millions Ukrainians died. Similar policies also inflicted enormous suffering on the Soviet Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan, Kuban region, Crimea, lower Volga region and throughout the whole Soviet Union. In his book The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivisation and the Terror-Famine Robert Conquest names Kaganovich together with Molotov, Pavel Postyshev and other Stalin's lieutenants as having personal responsibilities for the famine.
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.