Lazar Kaganovich
Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich (22 November 1893 – 25 July 1991) was a Jewish Soviet politician and administrator and one of the main associates of Joseph Stalin. Kaganovich is known for helping Stalin come to power and for his harsh treatment and execution of those deemed threats to Stalin's regime.
Life
Born to a Jewish family in Radomyshl, Russian Empire, 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 played a role in organizing, planning and supervising the collectivization policies that led to the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932–33 (the Holodomor in Ukraine in particular).
Kaganovich played a central role during the Great Purge, personally signing over 180 lists that sent tens of thousands to their deaths. For his ruthlessness, he received the nickname "Iron Lazar". 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.
