Lazar Kaganovich

Lazar Kaganovich
Лазарь Каганович
Kaganovich in 1950
First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union
In office
5 March 1953 – 29 June 1957
PremierGeorgy Malenkov
Nikolai Bulganin
Nikita Khrushchev
Preceded byLavrentiy Beria
Succeeded byAnastas Mikoyan
Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union
In office
21 August 1938 – 5 March 1953
PremierVyacheslav Molotov
Joseph Stalin
Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
In office
13 July 1930 – 21 March 1939
GensekJoseph Stalin
Preceded byVyacheslav Molotov
Succeeded byAndrei Zhdanov
Personal details
BornLazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich
(1893-11-22)22 November 1893
Kabany, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire
Died25 July 1991(1991-07-25) (aged 97)
Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Resting placeNovodevichy Cemetery, Moscow
PartyRSDLP (Bolsheviks) (1911–1918)
CPSU (1918–1961)
Signature
Central institution membership

Other offices held
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Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich (Russian: Лазарь Моисеевич Каганович; 22 November [O.S. 10 November] 1893 – July 25, 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. 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.