Lazar Kaganovich

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 (1893-11-22)22 November 1893 Kabany, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (now Dibrova, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine)
Died	25 July 1991(1991-07-25) (aged 97) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Resting place	Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow
Nationality	Soviet
Political party	RSDLP (Bolsheviks) (1911–1918) CPSU (1918–1961)
Signature
Central institution membership 1930–1957: Full Member, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th Politburo 1926–1930: Candidate Member, 14th & 15th Politburo 1924–25 & 1928–1939: Member, 13th, 15th, 16th, and 17th Secretariat 1924–26 & 1928–1946: Member, 13th, 15th, 16th, 17th & 18th Orgburo 1924–57: Full member, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th Central Committee Other offices held 1955–1956: Chairman of State Committee on Labor and Salary 1948–1952: Chairman of State Committee on Materiel-Technical Supply for National Economy 1944–47 & 1956–57: Minister of Construction Materials Industry 1941: Chairman of Council on Evacuation 1939–40:People's Commissar of Oil Industry 1939: People's Commissar of Fuel Industry 1937–39: People's Commissar of Heavy Industry 1935–37,1938–42 & 1943–44: People's Commissar for Transport 1931–1934: First Secretary of the Communist Party of Moscow 1930–1935: First Secretary of the Communist Party of Moscow Oblast 1925–28 & 1947: First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine

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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