Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich (Russian: Лазарь Моисеевич Каганович; 22 November [O.S. 10 November] 1893 – 25 July 1991) was a Soviet politician and one of Joseph Stalin's closest associates.
Born to a Jewish family in Ukraine, Kaganovich worked as a shoemaker and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1911. During and after the 1917 October Revolution, he held leading positions in Bolshevik organizations in Belarus and Russia, and helped consolidate Soviet rule in Turkestan. In 1922, Stalin placed Kaganovich in charge of an organizational department of the Communist Party, assisting the former in consolidating his grip on the party. Kaganovich was appointed First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine in 1925, and a full member of the Politburo and Stalin's deputy party secretary in 1930.
In 1932–33, he helped enforce grain quotas in Ukraine which contributed to the Ukrainian part of the Soviet famine of 1930-1933. From the mid-1930s on, Kaganovich variously served as the People's Commissar for Railways, Heavy Industry and Oil Industry. Following the outbreak of the Second World War, he was appointed a member of the State Defence Committee.
After Stalin's death in 1953 and the rise of Nikita Khrushchev, Kaganovich quickly lost his influence. After joining in a failed coup against Khrushchev in 1957, Kaganovich was dismissed from the Presidium and demoted to the director of a potash works in Perm and later in a cement works in Sverdlovsk in the Urals. He was expelled from the party in 1961 and lived out his life as a pensioner in Moscow. At his death in 1991, he was the last surviving Old Bolshevik. The Soviet Union itself outlasted him by only five months, dissolving on 26 December 1991.
Kaganovich was born in 1893 to Jewish parents in the village of Kabany, Radomyshl uyezd, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (today Dibrova, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine). Although not from a "fanatically observant" family, according to Kaganovich, he spoke Yiddish at home. He was the son of Moisei Benovich Kaganovich (1863–1923) and Genya Iosifovna Dubinskaya (1860–1933). Of the 13 children born to the family, 6 died in infancy.
Lazar had four elder brothers, all of whom became members of the Bolshevik party. Several of Lazar's brothers ended up occupying positions of varying significance in the Soviet government. Mikhail Kaganovich (1888–1941) served as People's Commissar of Defence Industry before being appointed Head of the People's Commissariat of the Aviation Industry of the USSR, while Yuli Kaganovich (1892–1962) became the 3rd First Secretary of the Gorky Regional Committee of the CPSU. Israel Kaganovich (1884–1973) was made the head of the Main Directorate for Cattle Harvesting of the Ministry of Meat and Dairy Industry. However, Aron Moiseevich Kaganovich (1888–1960s) apparently decided against following his siblings into government, and did not pursue a career in politics. Lazar also had a sister, Rachel Moiseevna Kaganovich (1883–1926), who married Mordechai Ber Lantzman; they lived together in Chernobyl for a period, but she subsequently died in the 1920s and was interred in Kiev.
Lazar Kaganovich left school at 14, to work in shoe factories and cobblers' shops. Around 1911, he joined the Bolshevik party — his older brother Mikhail Kaganovich had become a member in 1905. Early in his political career, in 1915, Kaganovich became a Communist organizer at a shoe factory where he worked.
During March and April 1917, he served as the Chairman of the Tanners Union and as the vice-chairman of the Yuzovka Soviet. In May 1917, he became the leader of the military organization of Bolsheviks in Saratov, and in August 1917, he became the leader of the Polessky Committee of the Bolshevik party in Belarus. During the October Revolution of 1917 he led the revolt in Gomel.
In 1918 Kaganovich acted as Commissar of the propaganda department of the Red Army. From May 1918 to August 1919 he was the Chairman of the Ispolkom (Committee) of the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate. In 1919–1920, he served as governor of the Voronezh Governorate. The years 1920 to 1922 he spent in Turkmenistan as one of the leaders of the Bolshevik struggle against local Muslim rebels (basmachi), and also commanding the succeeding punitive expeditions against local opposition.
In June 1922, two months after Stalin became the General Secretary of the Communist Party, Kaganovich was appointed head of the party's Organisation and Instruction Department (Orgotdel), which was expanded a year later by absorbing the Records and Assignment Department, and renamed the Organisation-Assignment Department (Orgraspred). This department was responsible for all assignments within the apparatus of the Communist Party. Working there, Kaganovich helped to place Stalin's supporters in important jobs within the Communist Party bureaucracy. In this position he became noted for his great work capacity and for his personal loyalty to Stalin. He stated publicly that he would execute absolutely any order from Stalin, which at that time was a novelty.
In May 1924, Kaganovich became a full member of the Central Committee, after having first been elected as a candidate one year earlier, a member of the Orgburo, and a Secretary of the Central Committee.
From 1925 to 1928, Kaganovich was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR. In July 1926, he was also elected a candidate member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He was given the task of "ukrainizatsiya" – meaning at that time the building up of Ukrainian communist popular cadres, and encouraging 'low' Ukrainian culture, by removing bureaucratic obstacles to the use of the Ukrainian language; but he treated high culture with great suspicion. He was particularly suspicious of the poet, Mykola Khvylovy, and sent Stalin a selection of quotations from Khvylovy's verses, which incited Stalin to launch an attack on the poet. He clashed frequently with the two most prominent ethnic Ukrainian Bolsheviks Vlas Chubar and Alexander Shumsky. Shumsky obtained an audience with Stalin in 1926 to insist that Kaganovich be recalled, but Kaganovich succeeded in getting Shumsky dismissed the following year, over his support for Khvylovy. Later, Stalin had a similar visit from Chubar, and the Ukraine President, Grigory Petrovsky.
In Moscow, he returned to his position as a Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, a job he held until 1939. As Secretary, he endorsed Stalin's struggle against the so-called Left and Right oppositions within the Communist Party, and backed Stalin's decision to enforce rapid collectivisation of agriculture, against the more moderate policy of Nikolai Bukharin, who argued in favor of the "peaceful integration of kulaks into socialism." In summer 1930, he was warned that Lenin's widow, Nadezhda Krupskaya had delivered a speech at a district party branch in Moscow, in which she criticised collectivisation. Kaganovich rushed to the meeting, and subjected Krupskaya to "coarse and scathing abuse."
In July 1930, Kaganovich was promoted to full membership of the Politburo, which he retained for 27 years.
In December 1930, when Vyacheslav Molotov was promoted to the post of chairman of the Soviet government, Kaganovich replaced him as Second Secretary, the post of Stalin's deputy in the party secretariat. In these four years, he was the third most powerful figure in the Soviet leadership, behind Stalin and Molotov. He was left in Moscow in charge of party affairs when Stalin was on vacation. In 2001, a collection of 836 letters and telegrams that Stalin and Kaganovich exchanged in 1931–36 were published in Russia. The bulk of them were translated and published in the US in 2003.
In 1933 and 1934, he served as the Chairman of the Commission for Vetting of the Party Membership (Tsentralnaya komissiya po proverke partiynykh ryadov) and ensured personally that nobody associated with anti-Stalin opposition would be permitted to remain a Communist Party member. In 1934, at the XVII Congress of the Communist Party, Kaganovich chaired the Counting Committee. He falsified voting for positions in the Central Committee, deleting 290 votes opposing the Stalin candidacy. His actions resulted in Stalin's being re-elected as the General Secretary instead of Sergey Kirov. By the rules, the candidate receiving fewer opposing votes should become the General Secretary. Before Kaganovich's falsification, Stalin received 292 opposing votes and Kirov only three. However, the "official" result (due to the interference of Kaganovich) saw Stalin with just two opposing votes.