Lazar Kaganovich

Soviet Politburo member

• Born: November 22, 1893
• Birthplace: Kabany, Ukraine, Russian Empire (now in Ukraine)
• Died: July 25, 1991
• Place of death: Moscow, Soviet Union (now in Russia)

Cause of notoriety: A high-ranking Soviet official, Kaganovich enthusiastically supported Joseph Stalin’s mass purges and forced collectivization, which resulted in the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens.

Active: 1917-1964

Locale: Soviet Union, mostly Moscow

Early Life

Lazar Kaganovich (LAY-zur kah-gah-NOH-vihch) was born in 1893 in the Ukraine to Jewish parents; his father was a tailor. At a young age, he worked in a shoe factory. When Kaganovich was eighteen, he heard a speech by the fiery revolutionary Leon Trotsky and joined the Bolsheviks, the most radical of Russia’s Marxist parties. He helped foment the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 under the alias “Zhirovich.” After the Bolsheviks established the Soviet Union as the world’s first communist state, Kaganovich fought in the Soviet Red Army against counterrevolutionary forces. He then began a rapid rise within the Soviet political system.

Political Career

A talented administrator, Kaganovich was quickly promoted as a favorite of Joseph Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union. Advancing swiftly in the ranks of the Soviet Communist Party, Kaganovich became a section leader of the Soviet Secretariat in 1922, a member of the Central Committee in 1924, first secretary of the Ukraine in 1925, and a member of the Politburo—the inner circle of Soviet rulers—in 1930. As a powerful commissar of the people, Kaganovich oversaw transport (1935-1937), heavy industry (1937-1939), and the fuel industry (1939). During World War II, he served as a deputy premier and as a member of the State Defense Committee.

During the 1930’s, Kaganovich gained a reputation as Stalin’s most loyal, tireless, and efficient subordinate. As head of the Party Control Commission, he helped collectivize Soviet farms and liquidate the class of kulaks (landowners) in the Ukraine and Siberia. During Stalin’s great terror of 1936-1938, Kaganovich conducted a ruthless purge of the industrial sector and thus bears responsibility for as many as a half million deaths. Kaganovich opposed any attempt to relax repression for political offenses. Some historians have also assigned him blame for the horrendous famine in the Ukraine between 1932 and 1933.

Throughout the terror, Stalin systematically liquidated the former Bolshevik leadership. Taking their place was a new group of party functionaries who were ruthless and absolutely servile to Stalin: men such as Kaganovich, Secret Police Chief Lavrenty Beria, Nikita S. Khrushchev (a protégé of Kaganovich and eventual leader of the Soviet Union), Georgi M. Malenkov, and Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov. As members of Stalin’s inner circle, Kaganovich and the others participated in Stalin’s macabre all-night drunken parties. Kaganovich also shared in the cult of personality of Stalin. In charge of the massive reconstruction of Moscow, Kaganovich was honored with the Order of Lenin, the Soviet Union’s highest award; he also had a battleship and the Moscow subway named for him.

De-Stalinization

In the vicious power struggle after Stalin’s death in 1953, Khrushchev rose to power as party leader. In 1956, Khrushchev, himself a former Stalin loyalist, denounced the cult of Stalin and launched a campaign of de-Stalinization, exposing Stalin’s former henchmen to imminent danger. Kaganovich was relegated to the Anti-party Group, and along with Malenkov and Molotov, he was accused of trying to overthrow Khrushchev in June, 1957. Kaganovich was expelled from the Presidium and sent to manage a cement factory in the Urals. In 1964, he was expelled from the Communist Party. He died in 1991 at the age of ninety-seven.

Impact

Even in his old age, Lazar Kaganovich remained a private but unabashed defender of Joseph Stalin and Stalinism. In such recorded conversations as those with Feliks Chuev and the disputed interviews with Stuart Kahan, Kaganovich continued to praise Stalin as the leading light of the Soviet Union. Kaganovich’s impact can be seen in two spheres: as Stalin’s henchman when Stalin was alive and as the continuing true believer following Stalin’s death. During Stalin’s dictatorship, Kaganovich was third in power, subordinate only to Stalin and Beria in responsibility for carrying out Stalin’s campaign of ruthless collectivization, industrialization, purges, and mass murder. Kaganovich combined administrative expertise with absolute devotion to Stalin and an apparent belief that the defense of the Russian Revolution justified any cruelty and loss of life. While Kaganovich always played the role of unassuming toady, his culpability remained unquestionable, as attested by his former protégé Nikita Khrushchev (who discussed Kaganovich in his 1970 memoirs) and by historians such as Robert Conquest.

Bibliography

Chuev, Feliks. Tak govoril Kaganovich. Moscow: Otechestvo, 1992. Although in Russian, this book, translated as Thus Spake Kaganovich, brings together invaluable conversations between Chuev and Kaganovich near the end of Kaganovich’s life.

Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror: A Reassessment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Conquest, a leading historian of Stalin’s reign of terror, records Kaganovich’s ruthless role in the purges of the 1930’s.

Kahan, Stuart. The Wolf of the Kremlin: First Biography of L. M. Kaganovich, the Soviet Union’s Architect of Fear. London: Robert Hale, 1989. A controversial biography of Kaganovich, attacked by Kaganovich’s heirs for questionable assertions, including that Kaganovich had a sister, Rosa, who became Stalin’s third wife.

Khrushchev, Nikita. Khrushchev Remembers. Translated and edited by Strobe Talbot. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970. In these memoirs, emanating from various sources, Khrushchev describes his former mentor Kaganovich as a vicious and despicable lackey of Stalin.

Rappaport, Helen. Joseph Stalin: A Biographical Companion. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 1999. Organized by topics, an encyclopedic guide to the events and people in the life of the Soviet dictator.

The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence: 1931-1936. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003. This collection of 177 letters reveals Stalin’s consolidation of his power in the course of receiving information from his perhaps most trusted subordinate—Kaganovich.