Lazar Kaganovich: Difference between revisions

|image = [[File:Lazar_Kaganovich.jpg|thumb|307px]]

|occupation = Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1938 - 1953)

|crimes = [[War crimes]]<br>Mass starvation<br>[[Genocide]]<br>[[Ethnic cleansing]]<br>Propaganda

|hobby = }}

 

Kaganovich was born in 1893 to Jewish parents in the village of Kabany, Radomyshl uyezd, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (now named Dibrova, Poliske Raion, Kiev Oblast, Ukraine). Early in his political career, in 1915, Kaganovich became a [[Communist]] organizer at a shoe-factory where he worked.

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'']}

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".

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'']}

[[Category:Russian Villains]]