Lazar Kaganovich | |
---|---|
Лазарь Каганович | |
![]() Kaganovich in the 1930s | |
First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union | |
In office 5 March 1953 – 29 June 1957 | |
Premier | Georgy Malenkov Nikolai Bulganin Nikita Khrushchev |
Preceded by | Lavrentiy Beria |
Succeeded by | Anastas Mikoyan |
Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union | |
In office 21 August 1938 – 5 March 1953 | |
Premier | Vyacheslav Molotov Joseph Stalin |
Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union | |
In office December 1930 – 21 March 1939 | |
Preceded by | Vyacheslav Molotov |
Succeeded by | Andrei Zhdanov |
Personal details | |
Born | Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich 22 November 1893 Kabany, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (now Dibrova, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine) |
Died | 25 July 1991 Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union | (aged 97)
Resting place | Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow |
Nationality | Soviet |
Political party | RSDLP (Bolsheviks) (1911–1918) CPSU (1918–1961) |
Signature | ![]() |
Central institution membership
Other offices held
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Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich[a] (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 Holodomor famine. From the mid-1930s on, Kaganovich variously served as the People's Commissar for Railways, Heavy Industry and Oil Industry, and during the Second World War 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 small potash works 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.[1] The Soviet Union itself outlasted him by only five months, dissolving on 26 December 1991.
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