The future revolutionary Kaganovich Lazar Moiseevich was born on November 22, 1893 in the small village of Kabany, in the Kyiv province. Information about his father is ambiguous. During the Soviet era, it was emphasized that Kaganovich came from a poor family. However, modern biographers note evidence that contradicts this version of people who knew Lazarus as a child. So, some of them called Moisei Kaganovich a prasol - a cattle buyer with considerable earnings.

early years

Whoever the father was, the son did not follow in his footsteps. Kaganovich Lazar Moiseevich began to master the skill of a shoemaker as a child. From the age of 14 he worked in shoe factories. Kaganovich was a Jew, which could not but affect his position in the Russian Empire. Most of the Jewish population was forced to endure the Pale of Settlement and various defeats in their rights. Because of this, many Jews joined the revolution.

Kaganovich Lazar Moiseevich in this sense was no exception. However, his party choice was unusual for a Jew. At that time, the Jewish population en masse joined the anarchists, Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries and Bundists. Lazar followed in the footsteps of his older brother Mikhail and in 1911 joined the Bolsheviks.

Young Bolshevik

The life of a young man has become a classic example for the revolutionary environment. He was constantly arrested for short periods of time, and the Bolshevik regularly changed his place of residence: Kyiv, Yekaterinoslav, Melitopol, etc. In all these cities, Kaganovich Lazar Moiseevich created party circles and trade unions of shoemakers and tanners. On the eve of the revolution, he settled in Yuzovka. While working and campaigning at a local shoe factory, Kaganovich met the young Nikita Khrushchev. They subsequently kept in touch throughout their many years of career growth in the party.

After the October Revolution, Kaganovich went to Petrograd, where he was elected to the Constituent Assembly on the Bolshevik list. Subsequently, he was involved in organizing propaganda activities, including in the newly created Red Army. When the civil war broke out, a loyal party member began working at the front: in Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh and Central Asia.

In Turkestan, Kaganovich became a member of the local Central Committee of the RCP (b) and joined the Revolutionary Military Council of the Turkestan Front. The party functionary was appointed chairman of the Tashkent City Council. At the same time, Kaganovich was elected to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR. The rapid movement up the nomenklatura ladder of the young party member could not but go unnoticed by Stalin, who at that time held the post of People's Commissar for National Affairs.

Stalin's protégé

Even under Lenin, young Kaganovich became a loyal supporter of Stalin, supporting him in the internal party struggle. The conflict between them flared up immediately after the death of their permanent leader in 1924. Stalin, preparing for a confrontation with Trotsky and other members of the Politburo that he disliked, began to elevate his own proteges. Koba had, as the secretary of the Central Committee, he could nominate his people for important party posts.

Kaganovich Lazar Moiseevich also found his place in this scheme. The functionary's family and youth were strongly connected with Ukraine - it was there that Stalin recommended him as the general secretary of the local Central Committee. At that time there was no dictatorship yet. Nevertheless, the collective government did not oppose this proposal, and the party approved the important appointment.

In Ukraine

Once in Ukraine, Lazar Kaganovich began to pursue a policy against “Ukrainization” - the promotion of national culture, school, language, etc. In his new post, the Bolshevik acquired many apparatus opponents, among whom were the chairman of the republican Vlas Chubar and the People's Commissar of Education. In 1928, they achieved his own, and Stalin recalled Kaganovich to Moscow. During his tenure, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine achieved some economic recovery after the Civil War.

Leadership of collectivization

Having returned Kaganovich to the capital, Stalin retained him in his cadre cohort and appointed him secretary of the Moscow Party Committee. In addition, Lazar Moiseevich received a seat in the Politburo. In the Central Committee he became responsible for agriculture. Just at the turn of the 20s and 30s. The peasantry had to endure dispossession. Kaganovich led the creation of collective farms. It was this loyal and dutiful supporter that Stalin made responsible for the complex state campaign in the countryside.

For his contribution to collectivization, Kaganovich was one of the first to receive the newly created Order of Lenin. Stalin, once again convinced of his loyalty, made his protégé chairman of the commission that carried out a major party purge in 1933-1934. At this time, Kaganovich remained in Moscow “in charge” when the leader went on vacation to the Black Sea for the whole summer.

Head of the People's Commissariat of Railways

They came In the economic race, Kaganovich Lazar Moiseevich also found a use for himself. The biography of the functionary would be incomplete without mentioning his work at the head of the People's Commissariat of Railways. Appointed to this position in 1935, he lost his post in the Moscow Party Committee. The hardware change was presented as a promotion. From the point of view of Stalin himself, Kaganovich’s movements fit into his own system, within which he never concentrated too many positions and power in the hands of one of his proteges.

Under Lazar Moiseevich, the People's Commissariat of Railways achieved an increase in the level of transportation, so important for the then accelerated modernization. New tracks were built and old ones were updated (some of them were in a sad state due to long use and the hardships of the civil war).

Moscow construction projects

For his successes, Kaganovich received the Order of the Banner of Labor. In addition, in 1936 - 1955. The Moscow Metro (later named after Lenin) bore his name. It was the People's Commissar of Railways who supervised the construction of the “subway” in the capital. The reconstruction of Moscow was also carried out under his control. The city received a new look as the capital of the proletarian state. At the same time, many churches were destroyed. The People's Commissar oversaw the explosion of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

In the late 30s, Kaganovich concurrently headed the energy and economic departments (heavy, fuel and oil industries). In the Council of People's Commissars (government), the Bolshevik became deputy chairman of Comrade Molotov.

During the years of repression

In 1937, Stalin began a major new campaign of purges in the party and the Red Army. Kaganovich, as expected, supported his boss’s initiative with all his might. He stimulated repression not only in his own People's Commissariat of Railways, but also proposed to look for saboteurs and enemies of the people at all levels of Soviet society.

Kaganovich is an associate of Stalin who gained access to the lists on which executions were carried out with the approval of the party elite. Dozens of documents signed by the People's Commissar remain in the Kremlin archives. According to historians, 19 thousand people were shot using these lists alone. Others close to Stalin were Molotov, Voroshilov and Yezhov (later shot). Kaganovich led the purges locally. To do this, in 1937 he traveled to some regions of the USSR (including Yaroslavl, Kyiv and Ivanovo regions). The party functionary was also involved in the notorious Katyn massacre - the murder of captured Polish officers.

The Great Patriotic War

During the Great Patriotic War, Kaganovich (as People's Commissar of Railways) was responsible for the evacuation of enterprises to the east of the country. The heaviest burden fell on the railways, which generally coped with their task. Soviet industry managed to quickly establish work in the rear and begin all the necessary deliveries to the front. In 1942, the People's Commissar was included in the Military Council of the North Caucasus Front. However, he mainly worked in Moscow, and visited the south on visits. Once in Tuapse, where the command post was located, during a bombing he was wounded in the arm by a shrapnel. At the front, Kaganovich organized the work of military tribunals and the military prosecutor's office.

In the second half of the war, Stalin began to include new members in the State Defense Committee. Among them was Kaganovich Lazar Moiseevich. The books of historians show that he did not play a big role in the State Defense Committee and was largely a nominal and technical figure.

Loss of power

In the last Stalinist years, Kaganovich continued to hold senior government positions. As a “business executive” he was placed at the head of the Ministry of Construction Materials Industry. In addition, Lazar Moiseevich returned to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine.

Afterwards, Kaganovich entered into a fierce party struggle. At first he supported the removal of Beria. However, already in 1957, he, along with Molotov and Malenkov, was included in a new “anti-party group” and removed from all posts. It is noteworthy that Kaganovich knew Khrushchev since the time of the revolution and at a certain stage even contributed to his rise in the ranks of the Stalinist nomenklatura.

The former People's Commissar was sent into honorable exile in Asbest, where he remained at party work. In 1961, he was finally expelled from the CPSU and sent to Kalinin. Kaganovich spent his old age in isolation - his figure never appeared on the political horizon again. Already during perestroika, journalists were able to reach him and record the memoirs of one of the highest-ranking Soviet officials of the Stalin era. The former People's Commissar died on July 25, 1991 at the age of 97.

Family

Like all those close to Stalin, Kaganovich Lazar Moiseevich, whose personal life merged with his service, experienced more than one family drama. His older brother Mikhail, the first to join the Bolshevik Party, was the People's Commissar of the USSR aviation industry. In 1940, he was removed from his post and given a warning. Mikhail, realizing that he could soon become a victim of the NKVD, committed suicide. Kaganovich's two other brothers were more fortunate. Israel worked in the Ministry of Dairy and Meat Industry, and Israel in the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade.

Kaganovich's wife Maria Privorotskaya joined the RSDLP back in 1909. During the Soviet era, she worked in trade unions, managed orphanages and was a deputy of the Moscow City Council. When in her youth Maria was engaged in party propaganda activities, she was met by her future husband Kaganovich Lazar Moiseevich. The children of this couple are their own daughter Maya (who prepared the publication of her father’s memoirs) and adopted son Yuri.

KAGANOVICH Mikhail Moiseevich

(10/16/1888 - 07/01/1941). Candidate member of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks from February 10, 1934 to March 22, 1939. Member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1934 - 1941. Member of the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1927 - 1934. Member of the CPSU since 1905

Brother of L. M. Kaganovich. Born in the village of Kabany, Chernobyl district, Kyiv province. Jew. Low education: self-taught. He started out as a metal worker. For revolutionary activities he was repeatedly arrested by the tsarist authorities. In 1917 - 1918 member of the headquarters of the Red Guard detachments at the Unecha station in the Chernigov province. In 1918 - 1922 chairman of the military revolutionary committee in Arzamas (Nizhny Novgorod province), chairman of the Surazh Council of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies (Smolensk province), district food commissar in Arzamas, member of the presidium of the Nizhny Novgorod executive committee of the provincial Soviet, secretary of the Vyksensky district committee of the RCP (b). He participated in the expropriation of grain from peasants and organized the work of food brigades. From 1923 to 1927, Chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod Provincial Council of National Economy. Under the patronage of his younger brother, he was transferred to Moscow. In 1928 - 1930 member of the board of the People's Commissariat of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate of the USSR. In 1927 - 1930 candidate member, 1930 - 1932 Member of the Presidium of the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In 1931 - 1932 Head of the Main Directorate of Mechanical Engineering and Metalworking, Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Economic Council. From 1932 to 1936, Deputy People's Commissar of Heavy Industry of the USSR (People's Commissar G.K. Ordzhonikidze). At the same time, in 1935 - 1936. Head of the Main Directorate of Aviation Industry of the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry. From December 1936, Deputy People's Commissar, from October 15, 1937 to January 11, 1939, People's Commissar of the Defense Industry of the USSR. The new People's Commissariat, separated from the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry, received aircraft manufacturing, shipbuilding, tank building, precision instrument making, optics, the production of weapons, explosives, as well as educational institutions that trained specialists for these industries. I.F. Tevosyan and L.V. Vannikov were appointed as his deputies. He demanded from his subordinates the most decisive uprooting of the enemies of the people from the defense industry. 08/03/1937 spoke at the general party meeting of the People's Commissariat, reported on the discovery of spy and sabotage nests at industry enterprises, and the arrest of many engineers and technicians. He gave the order to take a close look at everyone who knew and came into contact with the arrested: “It is the duty of communists to be security officers.” Since January 11, 1939, People's Commissar of the Aviation Industry of the USSR. Laid the foundations of the aviation industry. Traveled to the USA, studied the construction of aircraft factories. On January 10, 1940, he was removed from the post of People's Commissar and sent as director of aviation plant No. 24 to Kazan. In the resolution of the XVIII All-Union Conference of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the renewal of the central bodies of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks” (February 1941). ) one of the points sounded like this: “Warn Comrade M. M. Kaganovich, who, as People’s Commissar of the aviation industry, worked poorly, that if he does not improve in his new job, does not fulfill the instructions of the party and government, he will be removed from the membership Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and removed from leadership work.” According to L. M. Kaganovich, “the brother was accused of being in a conspiracy with Vannikov, in a spy organization, that together with Vannikov and others they were with the Germans - some kind of absurdity, and as if even Hitler meant almost make my brother the head of the government” (Chuev F.I. That’s what Kaganovich said. M., 1992. P. 79). Committed suicide during a confrontation. According to the story of L. M. Kaganovich, on the instructions of I. V. Stalin, it was carried out in the Council of People's Commissars by G. M. Malenkov, L. P. Beria and A. I. Mikoyan. L.V. Vannikov, who accused him, and others were called to testify. Hearing what they were saying, the hot-tempered M. M. Kaganovich almost rushed at them with his fists, shouting: “Bastards, scoundrels, you are lying!” They told him: “Please go to the reception area, sit down, we will call you again. And then we’ll discuss it.” As soon as they started discussing it, they ran in from the reception room and said that M. M. Kaganovich had shot himself. According to one version, he went into the reception room, according to another, into the restroom, according to a third, into the corridor. He had a revolver with him. According to L.M. Kaganovich, recorded by the historian G.A. Kumanev, it was he who asked I.V. Stalin to conduct a confrontation, because he was confident in the innocence of his younger brother. And he shot himself, preferring death to pre-trial prison. According to another version, published by the head of the General Department of the CPSU Central Committee V.N. Malin at the June (1957) Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, he shot himself in the restroom on Lubyanka (Molotov. Malenkov. Kaganovich. 1957. Transcript of the June Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee and other documents. M ., 1998. P. 430). There is another interpretation of this story: J.V. Stalin told L.M. Kaganovich about the available evidence incriminating his brother in connections with the “right”. L. M. Kaganovich told his brother about this by phone, and he shot himself that same day. He was buried without honors at the Novodevichy cemetery. He was elected a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1st convocation. Awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. 05/06/1953 L.P. Beria sent a note to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee addressed to G.M. Malenkov: “The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR checked the archival materials on the accusation of comrade. Kaganovich Mikhail Moiseevich in belonging to the right-wing Trotskyist organization. As a result of the inspection, it was established that these materials are slanderous, obtained in b. The NKGB of the USSR as a result of the use of perverted methods in investigative work, and comrade. M. Kaganovich, being slandered, committed suicide. On this basis, the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs issued a conclusion on the rehabilitation of Comrade. M. Kaganovich. At the same time, sending a copy of the conclusion of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs based on the results of the audit, I consider it necessary to establish a personal pension for M. Kaganovich’s wife, Tsitsily Yulievna Kaganovich” (APRF. F. 3. Op. 24. D. 439. L. 2). On 05/07/1953, L.P. Beria’s note was considered at a meeting of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee. The materials of the former NKGB of the USSR regarding M. M. Kaganovich were recognized as slanderous. He was completely rehabilitated (posthumously). Wife Tsitsiliya Yulievna (1896 - 1959) was given a one-time benefit in the amount of 50 thousand rubles and a personal pension was established.

Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich(born November 10 (22), 1893 in the village of Kabany, Radomysl district, Kyiv province of the Russian Empire (now the village of Dibrova, Polesie district, Kyiv region, Ukraine); died July 25, 1991 in Moscow) - Soviet statesman and political figure.

Lazar Kaganovich was born into a Jewish family, studied to be a shoemaker and then worked in shoe factories and shoe workshops. In 1911, he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). Kaganovich conducted party propaganda work among workers of Jewish origin in northern Ukraine and Belarus. During the First World War, he was arrested and deported to his homeland, but then returned illegally to Kyiv, after which he worked under false names in shoe factories in different cities of Ukraine, each time organizing illegal unions of shoemakers, and eventually moved to Donbass, to the city Yuzovka (now Donetsk), where, as a shoe factory worker, he led the Bolshevik organization. Here Lazar Kaganovich met the young Nikita Khrushchev.

After the February Revolution of 1917, Kaganovich was drafted into the army and sent to Saratov. During his military service, he was the chairman of the Saratov military Bolshevik organization and a member of the local committee of the RSDLP (b). He was arrested for propaganda, but escaped and moved to Gomel. During the Great October Socialist Revolution in Petrograd, Lazar Moiseevich was the leader and active participant in the October Uprising and the seizure of power in Gomel (now Belarus). He was elected to the Constituent Assembly (dissolved in January 1918) from the Bolshevik faction, and in December 1917 he took part in the III All-Russian Congress of Soviets as a delegate.

In the spring of 1918, Kaganovich was appointed commissar of the organizational and propaganda department of the All-Russian Collegium for the Organization of the Red Army and was sent to Nizhny Novgorod, and in September 1919 to the Southern Front to lead the Voronezh sector. In September 1920, he was sent to Central Asia, where he held several positions, including being a member of the Turkestan Bureau of the RCP (b) and chairman of the Tashkent City Council.

During this period, Lazar Kaganovich met Joseph Stalin, who began his climb up the party ladder, and in 1921 was transferred to Moscow to the position of instructor of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions, instructor and secretary of the Moscow and then the Central Committee of the Tanners' Union. From 1922 to 1923, Kaganovich was the head of the organizational and instructional department of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), which was later transformed into the organizational and distribution department of the Central Committee of the RCP (b). His first publications were devoted to theoretical issues of ideology. From June 2, 1924 to April 30, 1925, he was Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (b).

Soon after this, in the context of the beginning of the struggle for power against Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, Stalin insisted on the election of L.M. Kaganovich General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine. Lazar Moiseevich held this post from 1925 to 1928. At the XIV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1925, at which industrialization was declared a priority, he fully supported Stalin’s political course.

As the highest party leader of Ukraine, Kaganovich pursued a policy of Ukrainization aimed at promoting the development of the Ukrainian language, Ukrainian culture (opera, theater) and the promotion of Ukrainians into the administrative and party apparatus. However, at the same time, the struggle against all kinds of “petty-bourgeois nationalists” and supporters of wider autonomy was intensified. True, in all conflicts between the Ukrainian leadership and Moscow, he always stood on the side of the Kremlin. The policies pursued by Kaganovich in Ukraine provoked his conflict with the local party organization and the Ukrainian government. Therefore, Vlas Chubar and Grigory Petrovsky insisted on his recall from Ukraine. Stalin had to return him to Moscow. From July 12, 1928 to March 10, 1939, Kaganovich again worked as secretary of the party Central Committee.

The rise of his political career began in 1926. In the period from July 23, 1926 to July 13, 1930, Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich was a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In 1930, at the age of 37, he finally became a member of this highest body of political power of the USSR and served as a full member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) / CPSU until 1957. Until his death I.V. Stalin in 1953, Lazar Kaganovich, along with Zhdanov, Molotov, Voroshilov, Mikoyan, Malenkov and Beria, was one of the most influential party leaders of the Soviet Union.

He supported the removal from power of Nikolai Bukharin and Alexei Rykov. In addition, Kaganovich was one of the ardent supporters of the abolition of the New Economic Policy (NEP), welcomed the forced collectivization of agriculture in the USSR and played a large role in the fight against the kulaks. Already in the first half of the 30s of the last century, being a close ally of Stalin, he was one of the most influential party leaders in the country along with Molotov and Voroshilov, constantly intervened in various spheres of public life and acted as a leader or organizer of a variety of events and government campaigns.

Ideologically, L.M. Kaganovich adhered to dogmatic positions on issues of scientific Marxism. Therefore, at the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, held in 1930, he criticized the Soviet scientist Losev, calling him a “reactionary” and “an enemy of Soviet power.”

In 1930, Lazar Moiseevich, together with Molotov, took part in the All-Ukrainian Party Conference and supported the collectivization policy, which, according to some historians, led to the severe famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine. The Russian Volga region and northern Kazakhstan were also gripped by famine.

In the fall of 1932, Kaganovich, as the head of the emergency commission, was sent to the North Caucasus to combat the alleged sabotage of state grain procurements. As a result of this struggle, many thousands were arrested, and tens of thousands of people were deported to Siberia. And in mid-December 1932, he intensified the purges in Ukraine.

From 1930 to 1935 L.M. Kaganovich headed the Party Control Commission under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and was the first secretary of the Moscow Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In this post, he was responsible for changing the appearance of Moscow. His activities began with the “exposure” of supposedly “counter-revolutionary conspiracies” in the administrative and economic apparatus of the capital. Lazar Kaganovich wanted to build an “ideal city of the future” and therefore initiated the destruction of many old areas of the city, churches and buildings, including the demolition of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in 1931.

At the end of February 1935, he was appointed People's Commissar of Railways of the USSR, continuing to pay special attention to monitoring the construction of the Moscow Metro, the initiator and one of the leaders of which he had been since 1932. Thanks to his leadership, the first metro line was launched in 1935. The Moscow metro bore his name from 1935 to 1955.

In addition, he was engaged in the technical modernization and reorganization of the country's railway transport, and he managed to achieve some success in this matter through tightening discipline, party purges and unyielding firmness.

From 1937 to 1939 L.M. Kaganovich held the concurrent position of People's Commissar of Heavy Industry; from 1939 he became People's Commissar of the fuel industry, and from 1939 to 1940 he was the first People's Commissar of the oil industry. From 1946 to 1947, Lazar Moiseevich was the Minister of Construction Materials Industry.

From 1938 to 1945, he was also deputy, and from 1954 to 1957, first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR in the offices of Molotov, Malenkov and Bulganin. In this position, since 1947, Kaganovich supervised the work of the ministries of heavy industry and transport.

L.M. Kaganovich is one of those responsible for Stalin's purges of 1937–1939.

As for his participation in the Great Patriotic War, in 1942 he was for a short time a member of the Military Council of the North Caucasus, and later the Transcaucasian fronts, was one of the organizers of the defense of the Caucasus, but was wounded near Tuapse. Then, from 1942 to 1945, Lazar Moiseevich was a member of the State Defense Committee and was responsible for all military transportation, as well as the evacuation and arrangement of industrial complexes in new places.

After the war, in 1946, he replaced N.S. Khrushchev as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine and held this position until 1947, engaged in the restoration of the destroyed economy of the republic.

Before the end of Stalin's rule, Kaganovich officially remained the only Jew in the top Soviet leadership, but did nothing to stop the anti-Zionist campaign that began in the USSR at the end of 1948 (The Case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee).

After Stalin's death in 1953, Kaganovich remained a member of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee and became the first deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers - Malenkov. After the attempt to remove Khrushchev in 1957, the rest of the people from Stalin’s entourage (Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich, Pervukhin, Saburov, Bulganin and Voroshilov), condemned by the plenum of the CPSU Central Committee as an “anti-party group”, were removed from power. After this, L. M. Kaganovich worked for a short time as director of an asbestos production plant in the city of Asbest, and in 1958 he was responsible for housing construction in Kalinin. After the XXII Congress of the CPSU, held in 1961, he, along with Molotov and Malenkov, was expelled from the party. However, his departure from the political scene demonstrates certain changes that occurred in the post-war era. While during Stalin’s lifetime, expelled members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks/CPSU were, as a rule, arrested and shot, Kaganovich retired and continued to live in Moscow as a personal pensioner.

Lazar Moiseevich died on July 25, 1991, shortly before the complete collapse of the USSR, having lived just under a century - 97 years. All his life he remained firmly convinced that Stalin's policies were correct, and defended them in every possible way in his memoirs.

Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich occupied a special place among the significant figures of the Stalin era. The “Steel” People's Commissar is remarkable in that he turned out to be one of two or three high-ranking Jews who survived and outlived the Generalissimo during the rampant anti-Semitism. Historians agree that Kaganovich renounced his family and friends, which saved his life.

Childhood and youth

An associate of Joseph Vissarionovich was born in 1893 in the village of Kabany, Kyiv province, into a large (13 children) Jewish family. 7 offspring of Moses Gershkovich Kaganovich lived to see their 18th birthday.

Portrait of Lazar Kaganovich

Lazar Kaganovich assured that he was born and raised in a poor family, in a barn adapted for housing, where seven children “slept in one room on benches.” My father worked at a resin factory, earning pennies. But historian Roy Medvedev assures that the fiery revolutionary is disingenuous. According to his information, Kaganovich Sr. bought cattle, sold them to Kyiv slaughterhouses and was a wealthy man.

The historian is echoed by Isabella Allen-Feldman. She claims that her father, a Taganrog merchant, did business with Moisei Gershkovich, at that time a merchant of the first guild. According to unconfirmed information, the father of the “steel” People’s Commissar went bankrupt at the beginning of the First World War due to unsuccessful transactions with military supplies.

Lazar Kaganovich received a modest education: after graduating from the 2nd grade of school in Kabany, he went to complete his studies in a neighboring village. But at the age of 14 the young man was already working in Kyiv. He worked in factories, then got a job in a shoe factory, from where he moved to shoe workshops. From his last job - Lazar was a loader at a mill - he, along with ten colleagues, was fired for inciting a protest action.

In 1905, the eldest son of the Kaganovichs, Mikhail, joined the ranks of the Bolsheviks. After 6 years, Lazar Kaganovich became a member of the party.

Revolution

In 2014, the young shoemaker became a member of the Bolshevik Party committee in Kyiv, agitated young people and formed cells. At the end of 1917, in Yuzovka (Donetsk), Kaganovich was elected chairman of the local party committee and entrusted with replacing the head of the Yuzovsky Council of Workers' Deputies.

In the same 1917, Lazar Kaganovich was mobilized. An excellent agitator and fiery speaker became a prominent person in Saratov. He was arrested, but Lazar escaped to the front-line Gomel, heading the Polesie Bolshevik Committee. In Gomel, the 24-year-old revolutionary met the October events.

Lazar Kaganovich raised an armed uprising, which was crowned with success. From Gomel, Kaganovich moved to Petrograd, where he was elected secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (b).

But in 1957, Khrushchev put an end to Kaganovich’s career: a demonstrative defeat of the “anti-party group - Malenkov-Kaganovich” broke out. But times have changed, the oppositionists were not shot, but sent to rest. In 1961, Nikita Sergeevich achieved the expulsion of his opponent from the party.

Lazar Kaganovich is the last witness of the Stalin era. He lived to see perestroika, but his name was regularly “rinsed” in the press, calling him an ally of the satrap and accusing him of repression. Kaganovich avoided communicating with journalists, did not give interviews and did not make excuses. For the last 30 years of his life, the previously all-powerful People's Commissar lived in seclusion and wrote a book of memoirs.

Lazar Kaganovich was not reinstated in the party, but his personal pension was not taken away. The old communist did not regret what he had done and remained faithful to the ideals of his youth.

Personal life

The wife of Lazar Kaganovich turned out to be both a wife and an ally. Maria Markovna Privorotskaya joined the RSDLP in 1909. She worked in trade unions, was elected to the Moscow City Council, and ran orphanages.

Privorotskaya met Lazar Moiseevich when she worked as an agitator. They married and lived together until Maria's death in 1961. Widowed at 68, Kaganovich never remarried.

The couple had a daughter, Maya, who prepared for publication 6 years after her father’s death a book of his memoirs called “Memoirs.”

The Kaganovich family grew up with an adopted son, Yuri, whom some researchers of Stalin’s life call his illegitimate son, born to Lazar Kaganovich’s niece, Rachel-Rosa.

Death

After his retirement, Stalin's comrade-in-arms lived in a house on Frunzenskaya Embankment.

Lazar Kaganovich died at the age of 97. He did not live to see the collapse of the USSR for 5 months - he died on July 25, 1991. He was buried in the 1st section of the capital's Novodevichy cemetery, next to his wife Maria Kaganovich.

In 2017, a documentary series of films about seven leaders of the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1953 was released. We also remembered Lazar Kaganovich in the feed.

Memory

• In 1938, Kaganovich’s name was given to the Kaganovichi district of the Pavlodar region, but after 1957 it was renamed Ermakovsky.
• The famous Military Transport Academy created in Moscow was named after Lazar Kaganovich.
• In 1938-1943, the city of Popasnaya, Lugansk region, was named after L. M. Kaganovich.
• In the Kyiv region of the Ukrainian SSR there were settlements called Kaganovichi the First (in 1934) the modern name Polesskoye), and Kaganovichi the Second (the birthplace of Lazar Kaganovich).

• In the Oktyabrsky district of the Amur region there is a regional center, the village of Ekaterinoslavka, formerly the Kaganovichi station.
• The name of L. M. Kaganovich was borne in 1935-1955 by the Moscow Metro, the laying and construction of the first stage of which Kaganovich oversaw as the first secretary of the Moscow Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
• In Novosibirsk, the Zheleznodorozhny district of the city was now called Kaganovichsky.
• In Dnepropetrovsk, the Institute of Railway Transport Engineers was named after L. M. Kaganovich.
• In 1957, Kaganovich's name was removed from all objects named in his honor.

Alas, another emergency has occurred in the Russian space industry. Fortunately, all the cosmonauts survived and made a safe emergency landing in Kazakhstan. But what happened again raises the question of responsibility.

The phrase “Every accident has a name, surname and position” has been attributed to whomever has been attributed. However, most often they agree that the first to say it was People’s Commissar of Railways Lazar Kaganovich. And here we are again forced to quote the Soviet People's Commissar, since the planned launch of the Soyuz-MS spacecraft turned into an accident.

It is commendable, of course, that Rogozin immediately flew to the crew’s landing site, and so on.
“To find out the cause of the accident at the Soyuz-FG launch vehicle, by my decision, a state commission was formed. She has already started work. Telemetry is being studied. Rescue services work from the first second of the accident. The emergency rescue system of the Soyuz-MS ship worked normally. The crew has been saved."

This is all, of course, commendable, but after a fight they don’t wave their fists. And the people know this very well, as evidenced by the comments on Rogozin’s quoted tweet. Here are a few censored ones.

“You have to leave yourself so that those ENGINEERS who will NEVER obey the humanities will return. Unless, of course, this is a special operation to remove the ISS from orbit ahead of schedule in order to leave the United States without space. Then you can work as a party organizer at Roscosmos. Not higher".
“Rogozin, m.b. Is it because of you? And no commission is needed!”
“If you have even a drop of conscience and respect for yourself and your country, resign... well, you are destroying the last thing we have left, the space industry, although no, there is still ballet left.”

This, of course, can be attributed to the machinations of Euro-Ukrainians hiding behind pseudonyms, but people who do not hide their faces at all are also not inclined to give Rogozin any discount.

Armen Gasparyan: “Centuries pass, the political system changes, but the eternal misfortune of our service class in the form of the desire to show off is not going away.”

Maybe it really is necessary to return the space industry completely to the control of the military, as demanded in the comments? After all, at least lately, everything flies where it needs to go, and rockets don’t fall.

Whatever personnel conclusions were made after this accident, one thing is clear - this cannot continue. If a leader cannot organize the work of his subordinates so that they do not mess up, then he is an unprofessional leader, and he has nothing to do in sectors important to the state. Let him go to the private sector and practice how to launch, for example, aircraft to pollinate crop areas without accidents. And when he learns, it will be seen.