Editing Lazar Kaganovich

'''Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich''' (Russian: Ла́зарь Моисе́евич Кагано́вич; November 22nd, [O.S. November 10th] 1893 – July 25th,1991) was a Soviet politician and administrator and one of the main associates of [[Joseph Stalin]]. At his death in 1991, he was the last surviving Old Bolshevik. The Soviet Union itself outlived him by a mere five months.

In May 1922, Stalin became the General Secretary of the Communist Party and immediately transferred Kaganovich to his apparatus to head the ''Organizational Bureau'' or Orgburo of the Secretariat. 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.^{[''citation needed'']}

In 1924 Kaganovich became a member of the Central Committee. From 1925 to 1928, Kaganovich was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR. He was given the task of "ukrainizatsiya" - meaning at that time the building up of Ukrainian communist popular cadres. He also had the duty of implementing collectivization and the policy of economic suppression of the kulaks (wealthier peasants). He opposed the more moderate policy of Nikolai Bukharin, who argued in favor of the "peaceful integration of kulaks into socialism". In 1928, due to numerous protests against Kaganovich's management, Stalin was forced to transfer Kaganovich from Ukraine to Moscow, where 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 theso-called Left and Right Oppositions within the Communist Party, in the hope that Stalin would become the sole leader of the country. In 1933–1934 he served as the  

Kaganovich (together with [[Vyacheslav Molotov]]) participated with the All-Ukrainian Party Conference of 1930 and were given the task of implementation of the collectivization policy that caused a catastrophic 1932–33 famine (known as the Holodomor in Ukraine). He also personally oversaw grain confiscations during the same time periods. Similar policies also inflicted enormous suffering on the Soviet Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan, the Kuban region, Crimea, the lower Volga region, and other parts of the Soviet Union. As an emissary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Kaganovich traveled to Ukraine, the central regions of the USSR, the Northern Caucasus, and Siberia demanding the acceleration of collectivization and repressions against the Kulaks, who were generally blamed for the slow progress of collectivization. Attorney Rafael Lemkin in his work ''The Soviet Genocide in Ukraine'' tried to present the fact of Holodomor to the Nuremberg trials as a genocide of a totalitarian regime.^[3]

From 1935 to 1937, Kaganovich worked as Narkom (Minister) for the railways. Even before the start of the Great Purges, he organized the arrests of thousands of railway administrators and managers as supposed "saboteurs".

On June 1st, 1941 Stalin mentioned to Lazar that he had heard that Mikhail was "associating with the right wing". Lazar reportedly did not speak in the defence of his brother to Stalin, but did notify him by  

During World War II (known as the Great Patriotic War in the USSR), Kaganovich was Commissar (Member of the Military Council) of the North Caucasian and Transcaucasian Fronts. During 1943–1944, he was again the Narkom for the railways. In 1943, he was presented with the title of Hero of Socialist Labour. From 1944 to 1947, Kaganovich was the Minister for Building Materials. In 1947, he became the First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party. From 1948 to 1952, he served as the Chairman of Gossnab (State Committee for Material-Technical Supply, charged with the  

Until 1957, Kaganovich was a voting member of the Politburo as well as the Presidium. He was also an early mentor of the eventual First Secretary of the Communist Party Nikita Khrushchev, who first became important as Kaganovich's Moscow City deputy during the 1930s. In 1947, when Khrushchev was dismissed as the Party secretary of Ukraine (he remained in the somewhat lesser "chief of government" position), Stalin dispatched Kaganovich to replace him until Khrushchev was reinstated later that year.

influence after Stalin's death in March 1953. In 1957, along with fellow devoted Stalinists as well as other opponents of Khruschev, Vyacheslav Molotov, Dmitri Shepilov, and Georgy Malenkov (the so-called Anti-Party Group), he participated in an abortive party coup against his former protégé Khrushchev, whose criticism of Stalin had become increasingly harsh during the preceding two years. As a result of the unsuccessful coup, Kaganovich was forced to retire from the Presidium and the Central Committee, and was given the job of director of a small Ural potassium factory. In 1961, Kaganovich was completely expelled from the party and became a pensioner living in Moscow. His grandchildren reported that after his dismissal from the Central Committee, Kaganovich (who had a reputation for his temperamental and allegedly violent nature) never again shouted and became a devoted grandfather.^[8] In 1984 his re-admission to the Party was considered by the Politburo, alongside that of Molotov.^[9] At the time of Molotov's death in November 1986, he was refused access to his friend's funeral because of his severe state of dementia.^{[''citation needed'']}

In 1987, American journalist Stuart Kahan published a book entitled ''The Wolf of the Kremlin: The First Biography of L.M. Kaganovich, the Soviet Union's Architect of Fear'' (William Morrow & Co). In the book, Kahan made a series of claims about Kaganovich's working relationship with Joseph Stalin and his activities during the Ukrainian famine, and claimed to be Kaganovich's long-lost nephew. He also claimed to have interviewed Kaganovich personally and stated that Kaganovich admitted to being partially responsible for the death of Stalin in 1953 (supposedly by poisoning). A number of other unusual claims were made as well, including that Stalin was married to a sister of Kaganovich (supposedly named "Rosa") during the last year of his life and that Kaganovich (a Jew) was the architect of anti-Jewish pogroms.^[10]