Forgotten leaders Lazar Kaganovich. Lazar Kaganovich. Legal assessment of Kaganovich’s participation in Stalin’s repressions

Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich(November 10 (22), 1893, village of Kabany, Kiev province, Russian Empire - July 25, 1991, Moscow, RSFSR, USSR) - Soviet statesman and party leader, close associate of Stalin, younger brother of Mikhail Kaganovich.

Jewish aspect

He was married to Maria Markovna Privorotskaya (1894-1961).

(Maria Markovna’s brother is Privorotsky Grigory Markovich (1889-1971). Member of the party since 1906. Born in the Kiev province. In 1919, chairman of the military tribunal of the Kiev Military District. Since September 1919, he worked in the central apparatus of the Cheka - investigator at the Presidium , acting head of the Investigative Unit. In 1919-1920 - Chairman of the Vyatka Provincial Cheka. Worked as the chief arbiter under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR in the apparatus of the Ministry of Forestry Industry of the USSR. Buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery. )

Secretary of the Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in the 1920s, B. G. Bazhanov wrote in his memoirs:

“Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich is remarkable in that he was one of two or three Jews who continued to remain in power throughout the Stalin era. Under Stalin's anti-Semitism, this was only possible thanks to Kaganovich's complete renunciation of all his relatives, friends and acquaintances. For example, it is a known fact that when Stalin’s security officers raised before Stalin the case of Kaganovich’s brother, Mikhail Moiseevich, the Minister of Aviation Industry, and Stalin asked Lazar Kaganovich what he thought about it, then Lazar Kaganovich, who knew perfectly well that pure murder was being prepared without the slightest grounds, replied that this was a matter for the “investigative authorities” and did not concern him. On the eve of his inevitable arrest, Mikhail Kaganovich shot himself.”

However, if you believe the words of Lazar Kaganovich, Bazhanov’s memories do not correspond to reality.

L. M. Kaganovich: This case was not in Lubyanka, but in the Council of People's Commissars. There are a lot of lies and lies about this. Now about my attitude and about the conversation with Stalin, as if I said that this was the case of the investigator. This is a lie. And it was just like that. I came to the meeting. Stalin holds the paper and tells me: “Here is evidence against your brother, Mikhail, that he is together with the enemies of the people.” I say: “This is a complete lie, a lie.” He said it so abruptly that he didn’t even have time to sit down. "It's a lie. My brother, I say, Mikhail, a Bolshevik since 1905, a worker, he is a loyal and honest party member, faithful to the party, faithful to the Central Committee and faithful to you, Comrade Stalin.” Stalin says: “Well, what about the testimony?” I answer: “The readings can be wrong. I ask you, Comrade Stalin, to arrange a confrontation. I don't believe any of this. I ask for a confrontation.” He looked up like that. I thought and said: “Well, well, since you demand a confrontation, we’ll arrange a confrontation.” Two days later I was called. (I’m telling you this in documents; I haven’t told you this anywhere yet). But it’s a fact, that’s how it happened. Malenkov, Beria and Mikoyan called me into the same office where they were sitting. I came. They tell me: “We called to report an unpleasant thing. We called Mikhail Moiseevich to a confrontation.” I say: “Why didn’t they call me? I figured I’d be there.” They say: “Listen, the cases there are so solved that they decided not to bother you.” During that confrontation, Vannikov was called and pointed at him. And Vannikov was Mikhail’s deputy at one time. By the way, when they wanted to arrest Vannikov a little earlier, Mikhail very actively defended him. Vannikov even hid at Mikhail’s dacha and spent the night with him. They were close people. And when Vannikov was arrested, he pointed to Mikhail. And so they called Vannikov and others and staged a confrontation. Well, these show one thing, and Mikhail was a hot-tempered person, almost with his fists on them. He shouted: “Bastards, scoundrels, you are lying,” etc., etc. Well, they couldn’t discuss anything in front of them, they took the arrested people out, and they told Mikhail: “Please go to the reception room, sit down, we will call you again. And then we’ll discuss it.” They just started discussing it when someone from the reception room runs up to them and says that Mikhail Kaganovich shot himself. He actually went out into the reception area, some say into the restroom, others say into the corridor. He had a revolver with him and shot himself. He was a hot-tempered, temperamental man. And, besides, he was a decisive man and decided: I will not go to the investigative prison. And it’s better to die than to go to remand prison http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3. 0, which was subsequently changed, corrected and edited.

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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.

(1893-1991) Soviet politician and statesman

When the news of the death of Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich appeared in the newspapers, many asked in bewilderment: “Is he really still alive?” He lived for almost a hundred years and for a long time remained the only one of those who formed Stalin’s inner circle. In addition, he remained unchanged in his convictions until his last day.

Lazar Kaganovich was born into the family of a successful merchant-prasol in the small Ukrainian village of Kabany. His father was engaged in buying livestock from peasants for subsequent resale. Later, Kaganovich did his best to hide his origins, posing as the son of a shoemaker. Contrary to the traditions established in Jewish families, he did not receive any education as a child. At the age of ten, Lazar began working at one of the Kyiv shoe factories. There he mastered the profession of a shoemaker. In 1911, following the example of his older brother, Lazar joined the Bolshevik Party. At this time he was engaged in agitation among Jewish workers. He continued his campaigning activities after being drafted into the army. He was punished several times and was even sent to a disciplinary battalion.

Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich met the February and then the October Revolution in Gomel, where he became one of the leaders of the local Bolshevik organization. There he was elected as a deputy of the Constituent Assembly. To participate in his work, Kaganovich came to Petrograd. After the Bolsheviks dispersed the meeting, he managed to get a job in the Bolshevik government bodies. He was elected to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and thanks to this he remained in Petrograd. It was at that time that Lazar Kaganovich met Stalin. An executive, ready to do anything just to earn the approval of his superiors, Kaganovich turned out to be one of those people with whom Stalin was already trying to surround himself at that time.

However, then their paths diverged for several years, because with the outbreak of the civil war, Kaganovich was sent to the front as a political commissar. He fought against Denikin, and then was sent to Turkestan, where he established communist power with harsh measures. Only in 1920 did Stalin remember Kaganovich and summon him to Moscow. Soon Lazar Kaganovich became the head of the organizational department of the Central Committee. From that time on, he was one of Stalin's closest assistants and a blind executor of all his instructions. True, numerous secretaries did the main work for him. For example, B. Bazhanov wrote his first article, published in Pravda.

In 1924, Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich was sent to Ukraine, where he soon became the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. There he was one of the pioneers of the purges of Ukrainian communists on charges of nationalism. Kaganovich’s activities aroused such a negative attitude that after two years he was forced to be recalled to Moscow. At that time, Stalin had already become the General Secretary of the Central Committee and did not forget his nominee.

Kaganovich was also introduced to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and was entrusted with the most responsible area - carrying out collectivization. Endowed with unlimited powers, Kaganovich travels on a special train throughout the country: he ends up in Voronezh, then in the North Caucasus, then again in Ukraine. And everywhere his arrival is accompanied by cruel terror: the deportation of many thousands of people to camps and uninhabited places.

Kaganovich's activities were highly appreciated by Stalin, who nominated him as first secretary of the Moscow party organization and member of the Politburo. In Moscow, Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich came up with the idea of ​​so-called modernization of the city. In fact, this meant the merciless demolition of historical and, above all, religious monuments. The unique historical identity of the city was practically eliminated.

On the personal orders of Lazar Kaganovich, in particular, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, built with donations from the people as a sign of the Russian victory over Napoleonic troops, was blown up. Only a happy accident saved the world famous St. Basil's Cathedral from destruction. The most valuable monuments on the territory of the Kremlin, as well as the oldest stone buildings in Moscow, were not spared. At the same time, Kaganovich became one of the first organizers of “people’s construction projects.” On his initiative, construction of the metro began in Moscow, where prison labor was used for the first time.

Stalin appointed Kaganovich to many government posts. In 1935, he became People's Commissar of Railways, and two years later he headed the fuel and then the oil industry. And everywhere Kaganovich sought to justify the trust placed in him, which was expressed in merciless exploitation and cruel terror.

It was on his initiative that a law was developed and then adopted, according to which dismissals were prohibited and harsh punishments were introduced for absenteeism and tardiness.

Kaganovich extended his heartlessness to his loved ones. All members of his family were subjected to repression. His older brother, Mikhail Moiseevich, who worked as the director of a large plant, was accused of treason. When he found out that he was going to be arrested, he shot himself.

In 1940, Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich became deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars.

When the war began, he first worked in Moscow. But soon Stalin entrusts him with a new task - organizing the so-called barrage detachments. They were supposed to shoot the retreating soldiers. Kaganovich also took no less decisive measures against those leaving the encirclement. Many military leaders and junior commanders were unfoundedly accused and immediately shot after the verdict was passed.

After the war, Kaganovich was sent to Ukraine, where he was engaged in the so-called cleansing of alien elements. In reality, this meant brutal terror against the civilian population of the temporarily occupied regions, primarily located in western Ukraine. On Kaganovich's orders, many thousands of innocent people were sent to camps.

Since 1947, Lazar Kaganovich again found himself in a leadership position in Moscow. One of his last acts was the organization of a nationwide celebration of Stalin’s seventieth birthday. At the same time, Kaganovich begins a new wave of repression—the persecution of “rootless cosmopolitans.” It was supposed to become a kind of prologue to the mass deportation of Jews to the Far East. Only Stalin's death crossed out these monstrous plans.

Although Kaganovich was considered one of the main heirs of the dictator, he chose to step into the shadows and supported Khrushchev, who became the leader of the party, and therefore the country. In the summer of 1953, he agreed to the execution of L. Beria. As de-Stalinization grew, Kaganovich’s attitude towards Khrushchev changed dramatically. And in 1957, together with Molotov and Malenkov, he tried to achieve the removal of the first secretary. When the attempt failed and Khrushchev gained the upper hand, all three were expelled from the Central Committee for forming an “anti-party group.”

Kaganovich was sent to the small Ural town of Asbest, where he worked as director of a mining and processing plant until 1961. His fate changed dramatically after at the XXII Congress of the CPSU in October 1961, he was named among the main initiators of Stalin’s purges and executions.

Kaganovich was fired from his job and expelled from the ranks of the CPSU. He returned to Moscow, settled in an apartment on Frunzenskaya Embankment and began to lead an extremely secluded lifestyle. After Khrushchev was dismissed in 1964, Kaganovich applied to be reinstated in the party, but was refused. Only twenty years later, when K. Chernenko became the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Kaganovich was reinstated in the ranks of the party.

True, even earlier his personal pension was returned to him. After Khrushchev’s removal, Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich still hoped that Stalin’s name would be rehabilitated, but after these hopes collapsed, he practically put himself under house arrest. He was visited only by a few trusted acquaintances and his daughter Maya. People he met on the street crossed to the other side when they recognized him.

But Lazar Kaganovich considered himself unfairly offended and until the last days of his life he worked on his memoirs. They are more like a textbook on the history of the Communist Party than a story from a real person about his life and experiences. In his free time, Kaganovich walked a lot along Moscow boulevards; at that time no one recognized him. When he died, he was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

Ranks

major general

Positions

People's Commissar of Railways of the USSR

member of the State Defense Committee

member of the Military Council of the North Caucasus and then Transcaucasian fronts

Biography

Kaganovich Lazar Moiseevich - Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (SNK) of the USSR, member of the State Defense Committee (GKO), People's Commissar of Railways of the USSR.

Born on November 10 (22), 1893 in the village of Kabany, now Chernobyl district, Kyiv region of Ukraine, into a poor family of prasol (supplier of livestock to slaughterhouses). Jew. Having received primary education at the age of 13, he left in search of work in the city of Kyiv, where he got a job at a tannery. In 1911, he was involved in the revolutionary movement by his older brother Mikhail. Member of the RSDLP(b) since 1911. He took an active part in the work of the tanners' trade union.

In 1915, Lazar Kaganovich was arrested and exiled to his native village of Kabany, after which he went underground and, together with his wife Maria, moved to Yuzovka (since 1924 - the city of Donetsk), where after the February Revolution he became deputy chairman of the Yuzovsky Council and chairman of the tanners' union.

In the spring of 1917, Kaganovich, on instructions from the party, was sent to the army for propaganda work. In March-April 1917, he was the chairman of the Bolshevik military organization in Samara. In June 1917, he took part in meetings of the All-Russian Conference of Military Organizations under the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), where he was elected to the All-Russian Bureau of Military Organizations.

After returning from the army, Kaganovich was again arrested and sent to the front, but in Gomel (Belarus) through the efforts of local Bolsheviks he was released, and from August 1917 he became the chairman of the Polesie Committee of the RSDLP (b) in Gomel, playing an important role in the Bolsheviks coming to power in Gomel and Mogilev.

After the Great October Socialist Revolution L.M. Kaganovich became one of the organizers of the creation of the Red Army: in 1918, he was commissar of the organizational and propaganda department of the All-Russian Collegium for the organization of the Red Army, which allowed him to establish personal connections with a number of famous Bolsheviks.

In the middle of the summer of 1918, Kaganovich was sent to Nizhny Novgorod, which became a front-line city due to the advance of units of the Czechoslovak corps. Here, from May 1918 to August 1919, he served as chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod Provincial Committee of the RCP (b) and the provincial Executive Committee.

The commitment of L.M. manifested during this period. Kaganovich’s ideas of over-centralization of the party and state leadership and ruthlessness towards the enemies of the revolution were further strengthened in him from September 1919 to August 1920 during the defense of Voronezh, when he served as chairman of the Voronezh provincial Revolutionary Committee and the provincial Executive Committee and during the suppression of the Basmachi in Turkestan in 1920–1921, where he was a member of the Turkestan Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), the Turkic Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, People's Commissar of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate of the Turkmen Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, chairman of the Tashkent City Council.

Since 1921 L.M. Kaganovich was sent to trade union work: instructor of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, instructor and secretary of the Moscow Committee and secretary of the Central Committee of the Tanners' Union.

In 1922, after I.V. Stalin became the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), Kaganovich on the recommendation of V.V. Kuibyshev was transferred to Moscow to work in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) to the position of head of the organizational and instructional, and then the organizational and distribution department. All appointments and transfers to responsible positions passed through this department.

Since 1923 L.M. Kaganovich - a candidate member, from May 1924 a member of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), from June 1924 to December 1925 - a member of the Organizational Bureau of the Central Committee, from June 1924 to April 1925 - secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (b). Working next to the secretaries of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks I.V. Stalin, V.M. Molotov, V.V. Kuibyshev, Kaganovich established close relations with them. He clearly proved himself to be an indispensable assistant to I.V. Stalin in the fight against opposition in the top party leadership. He actively helped him in the fight against the Trotskyists and the “right”.

In April 1925 L.M. Kaganovich was appointed General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine. Fully supported the line of I.V. Stalin in relation to the NEP, fought for increasing capital investments in the industrial development of Ukraine, in particular, he was a supporter of the construction of the Dnieper power plant. In his speech at the July (1928) Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, he explained the difficulties during the grain procurement campaign solely by the resistance of the kulaks.

In June 1926, Kaganovich L.M. elected a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and in July 1928 returned to Moscow to the post of Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

The first half of the 1930s was the peak of L.M.’s career. Kaganovich. Since July 1930, he has been a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In December 1930, after the appointment of V.M. Molotov Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, I.V. Stalin appointed Kaganovich as his deputy in the party. Lazar Moiseevich not only headed the work of the Organizational Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and a number of the most important departments of the Central Committee, but also led the meetings of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks during the vacation period of I.V. Stalin, chaired numerous Politburo commissions.

In 1930-35 L.M. Kaganovich - first secretary of the Moscow Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). In this responsible position, he mobilizes the party organization and the workers of Moscow and the Moscow region to implement the decisions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the implementation of the master plan for the reconstruction of the capital. In 1931, construction of the metro began in Moscow, the direct supervision of which was carried out by L.M. Kaganovich.

On May 13, 1935, the Central Executive Committee of the USSR Union decided to name the Moscow Metro after L.M. Kaganovich.

During the period of L. M. Kaganovich's work as secretary of the Moscow Party Committee, the communists of Moscow and the Moscow region achieved the successful transformation of the Moscow region from a consuming region to a producing region.

In 1933, Kaganovich headed the agricultural department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. He deserves great credit for leading the political departments of MTS and state farms. As Chairman of the Central Commission for Inspection of Party Ranks L.M. Kaganovich led the purge of the party that took place in 1933-34.

In 1934, at the XVII Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) L.M. Kaganovich made a report “Organizational issues (party and Soviet construction).”

After the XVII Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Kaganovich, was elected Chairman of the Party Control Commission under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In 1934, he headed the transport commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, and subsequently the transport department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

In 1935-1944 L.M. Kaganovich - People's Commissar of Railways of the USSR. Since 1937, he has been concurrently the People's Commissar of Heavy Industry, since January 1939 - the People's Commissar of the Fuel Industry and from October 1939 to July 1940 - the People's Commissar of the Oil Industry of the USSR. Since August 1938, simultaneously deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.

During the Great Patriotic War, L.M. Kaganovich is a member of the State Defense Committee, a member of the Military Council of the North Caucasus and then the Transcaucasian fronts.

During the war years L.M. Kaganovich was primarily responsible for the uninterrupted operation of the railways, which had a special responsibility during the war. The railways, already overloaded in the USSR, now had to carry out a huge volume of military transportation and the evacuation of many thousands of enterprises to the eastern regions of the country. And the railways coped with the incredibly difficult tasks of the war years, and this was undoubtedly the merit of the “iron commissar” L.M. Kaganovich.

By a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated November 5, 1943, for special services in the management of railway transport in difficult wartime conditions, Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor with the Order of Lenin and the Hammer and Sickle gold medal.

But being a skillful organizer and a person of tireless efficiency, L.M. Kaganovich, at the same time, was an extremely rude and domineering person, cruel to his subordinates. An active participant in mass repressions, he himself was their initiator in railway transport and in other departments headed by him.

Since December 1944, L.M. Kaganovich is Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and Deputy Chairman of the Transport Committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR.

In March 1947, L. M. Kaganovich was elected first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine instead of N.S. Khrushchev, who remained only the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR. After 9 months, Stalin returned Khrushchev and Kaganovich to their former places. Since December 1947, he has been Deputy, and since March 1953, First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. At the plenum of the CPSU Central Committee in October 1952, after the 19th Congress of the CPSU, L.M. Kaganovich was elected a member of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee.

After the death on March 5, 1953, I.V. Stalin L.M. Kaganovich was entrusted with the post of First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, at the same time from May 1955 to June 1956 he was Chairman of the State Committee of the USSR Council of Ministers on Labor and Wages, and from September 1956 to May 1957 - Minister of the Construction Materials Industry of the USSR.

As a member of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, L.M. Kaganovich supported N.S. Khrushchev in the fight against L.P. Beria, agreed to his arrest and execution. However, Khrushchev's attempts to carry out a campaign of cautious, half-hearted de-Stalinization caused a negative reaction from Kaganovich.

Together with V.M. Molotov and G.M. Malenkov L.M. Kaganovich opposed Khrushchev, receiving the support of the majority of members of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee. As a result, the so-called “anti-party group of Molotov - Kaganovich - Malenkov and Shepilov who joined them” was defeated, and for involvement in it on June 29, 1957, by the decision of the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, Kaganovich L.M. was removed from all posts, removed from the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee and from the CPSU Central Committee. He received a severe reprimand and was entered into the registration card “for behavior unworthy of the title of a member of the CPSU, for bullying subordinate employees,” and was sent to work as director of the Ural Potash Plant.

In 1961, at the XXII Congress of the CPSU, he was criticized and accused of organizing mass repressions of the 1930s. In December 1961 L.M. Kaganovich was expelled from the ranks of the CPSU by the party organization of the Krasnopresnensky district committee of the CPSU in Moscow.

Since 1961 L.M. Kaganovich is a personal pensioner of union importance. Lived in Moscow on Frunzenskaya Embankment, house No. 50, apartment 384.

After Khrushchev's resignation, he made repeated unsuccessful attempts to restore membership in the CPSU.

He died suddenly on July 25, 1991 at the age of 97. He was buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery (section 1).

He was awarded four Orders of Lenin (03/15/1935, 11/05/1943, 11/21/1943), the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (01/17/1936), and medals.

Name L.M. Kaganovich was carried by the Moscow Metro until 1955, and then, until 1957, by the Okhotny Ryad station, the first Soviet trolleybus had the “LK” brand in his honor. The Kashirskaya power plant in the Moscow region was named after him.

Biography provided by Nikolai Vasilievich Ufarkin (1955-2011)

Sources Zenkovich N. A. The most closed people. Encyclopedia of biographies. - M., 2004. Medvedev Roy. They surrounded Stalin. Moscow, "Politizdat", 1990.

Kaganovich was born into the Jewish family of Prasol Moisei Gershkovich Kaganovich in the village of Kabany, Radomysl district, Kyiv province (now the village of Dibrova, Polesie district, Kyiv region). His biographies report: “Kaganovich was born into a poor family.” However, according to eyewitnesses, his father, prasol Moisei Kaganovich, bought cattle and sent them in droves to the slaughterhouses in Kyiv, so the Kaganovich family was not poor. From the age of 14 he began working in Kyiv at various factories, shoe factories and shoe workshops as a shoemaker. At one time he was a loader at the Lazar Brodsky mill, from where he was fired along with a group of about 10 young loaders for organizing protests in front of the enterprise administration. Deprived of many rights that not only Russians, but also other “foreigners” enjoyed in Russia, Jewish youth were a fertile environment for revolutionary agitation. Having been exposed to this agitation and under the influence of his older brother Mikhail, who joined the ranks of the Bolsheviks back in 1905, Lazar in 1911 became a member of the RSDLP (b) / CPSU (b) / CPSU. From 1914 to 1915 - member of the Kyiv Party Committee. In 1915 he was arrested and deported to his homeland, but soon returned illegally to Kyiv. In 1916, under the name Stomakhin, he worked as a shoemaker at a shoe factory in Yekaterinoslav (Dnepropetrovsk), and was the organizer and chairman of the illegal Union of Shoemakers. Head of the district and member of the Yekaterinoslav Bolshevik Party Committee. According to the official version, due to the betrayal of the provocateur, he was forced to leave for Melitopol, where, working under the name Goldenberg, he again organized the Shoemakers Union and the Bolshevik group. Then he moved to Yuzovka (now Donetsk), where, under the name of Boris Kosherovich, he worked at the shoe factory of the Novorossiysk Society and was the leader of the Bolshevik organization and organizer of the Shoemakers' Union.

From the beginning of the February Revolution of 1917, he was the head of the Yuzovsky Party Committee and deputy chairman of the Yuzovsky Council of Workers' Deputies. Since May 1917, while in military service, he was the chairman of the Saratov military Bolshevik organization, a member of the Saratov Bolshevik Party Committee, a member of the soldiers' committee of the training team and a member of the executive committee of the Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. In June, he was delegated to the All-Russian Conference of Bolshevik Military Party Organizations, at which he was elected a member of the All-Russian Bureau of Military Party Organizations under the Central Committee of the RSDLP(b). Arrested for Bolshevik propaganda. He moved to Gomel, where from September 1917 he worked as chairman of the Polesie Committee of the Bolshevik Party, was a member of the executive committee and a member of the board of the Tanners' Union.

Revolution and Civil War (1917-1922)

An active participant in the 1917 revolution - he led the October Uprising in Gomel. In the elections to the Constituent Assembly he was elected on the Bolshevik list. In December 1917, Kaganovich also became a delegate to the III All-Russian Congress of Soviets. At the Congress of Soviets, Kaganovich was elected to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR. From January 1918 he worked in Petrograd. Together with other members of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, in the spring of 1918, he moved to Moscow, where he became a commissar of the organizational and propaganda department of the All-Russian Collegium for the Organization of the Red Army. At the end of June 1918, the Central Committee of the RCP(b) was sent to Nizhny Novgorod, where he was an agitator for the provincial committee, head. propaganda department, chairman of the provincial committee and the provincial executive committee. In September 1919 he was sent to the Voronezh sector of the Southern Front. After the capture of Voronezh by the Red Army, he became the chairman of the Voronezh Gubernia Revolutionary Committee, and then the Gubernia Executive Committee. In September 1920, he was sent by the Central Committee of the RCP(b) to Central Asia as a member of the Turkestan Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars - a member of the Turkestan Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) and at the same time one of the leaders of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Turkestan Front, People's Commissar of the RCI of the Turkestan Republic and Chairman of the Tashkent City Council.

In 1921 he worked as an 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. At the beginning of 1922, he was sent by the Central Committee of the Party to Turkestan as a member of the Turkestan Central Committee of the RCP (b). In 1922, Lazar Kaganovich was appointed head of the organizational and instructional department, which later became the organizational and distribution department of the Central Committee of the RCP (b). At the XII Congress he was elected a candidate member of the Central Committee of the RCP(b), and with the XIII - a member of the Central Committee of the RCP(b). From 1924 to 1925 - Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (b).

In the top leadership of the Ukrainian SSR and the USSR (1922-1941)

At the head of Ukraine

In the acute internal party struggle that unfolded after Lenin’s death in 1924, it was extremely important for Stalin to secure the support of Ukraine, the largest union republic after the RSFSR. On the recommendation of Stalin, it was Kaganovich who was elected in 1925 as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine. At that time, two courses were pursued in national policy in Ukraine: on “Ukrainization,” that is, encouraging Ukrainian culture, language, schools, promoting Ukrainians to the administrative apparatus, etc., and on combating “bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalism.” It was not easy to clearly distinguish between these two courses, especially in cities and industrial centers, and Kaganovich clearly gravitated towards the second course: he was merciless towards everything that seemed to him Ukrainian nationalism. He had frequent conflicts with the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of Ukraine V. Ya. Chubar. One of Kaganovich’s most active opponents was also a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b)U and People’s Commissar of Education of Ukraine A. Ya. Shumsky, who in 1926 obtained a reception from Stalin and insisted on the recall of Kaganovich from Ukraine. Although Stalin agreed with some of Shumsky’s arguments, he simultaneously supported Kaganovich by sending a special letter to the Politburo of the Central Committee of Ukraine. Kaganovich did a lot of work to restore and develop industry in Ukraine. However, in the political and cultural fields, his activities did much more harm than good. As the party leader of Soviet Ukraine, Kaganovich was the de facto leader of the small Communist Party of Western Ukraine. The national situation and sentiments among the population of the western part of Ukraine differed significantly from what took place in its eastern part. After Kaganovich left for Moscow, Chubar criticized Kaganovich’s policies. Opposition to Lazar Moiseevich grew. V. Ya. Chubar and the Chairman of the USSR Central Executive Committee from the Ukrainian SSR G. I. Petrovsky came to Stalin with requests to recall Kaganovich from Ukraine. At first, Stalin resisted, but still in 1928 he had to return Kaganovich to Moscow. Since 1926, Kaganovich was a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

Kaganovich on the rise

At the beginning of 1930, Kaganovich became the first secretary of the Moscow regional and then city party committees, as well as a full member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. As secretary of the Central Committee and head of the agricultural department of the Central Committee in 1929-1934, he directly supervised “the matter of organizational and economic strengthening of collective farms and state farms and the fight against sabotage of state events organized by the kulaks.” For his success in the development of agriculture in the Moscow region, he was awarded the Order of Lenin. The first half of the 30s was the time of Kaganovich’s greatest power. In 1933, he headed the established agricultural department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and actively led the organization of MTS on collective and state farms. As chairman of the Central Commission for Purging the Party, he led the “cleansing of party ranks” that took place in 1933-34. On September 21, 1934, he delivered a keynote speech at a meeting of judicial and prosecutorial workers of the Moscow region. After the XVII Congress in 1934-1935, Chairman of the Party Control Commission under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

During the same period (1934), Kaganovich - part-time - also became the head of the Transport Commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. When Stalin went on vacation to the Black Sea, it was Kaganovich who remained in Moscow as the temporary head of the party leadership. He was one of the first to be awarded the highest insignia introduced in the country - the Order of Lenin. On February 28, 1935, Kaganovich took the position of People's Commissar of Railways, retaining the post of Secretary of the Central Committee; however, he loses two other important posts - the first secretary of the Moscow Party Committee and the chairman of the Party Control Commission under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. The appointment of prominent party leaders to economic people's commissariats has been a custom since the Civil War. Rail transport in a huge country was not just important - it was a “bottleneck” of the national economy that held back economic growth. Kaganovich's appointment to this area of ​​work did not look like disgrace, but it was presented almost as a promotion. For exceeding the railway transportation plan and for success in organizing railway transport and introducing labor discipline, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor in January 1936. In 1935-1955, the Moscow Metro bore Kaganovich’s name, and then, until 1957, the Okhotny Ryad station; The first Soviet trolleybus had the “LK” brand in his honor.

From 1937, part-time - People's Commissar of Heavy Industry, from 1939 - People's Commissar of the Fuel Industry, from October 12, 1939-1940. - first people's commissar of the oil industry of the USSR. Since August 1938, at the same time - Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.

Master plan for the reconstruction of Moscow

In 1935, Kaganovich directly supervised the work on drawing up a master plan for the reconstruction of Moscow and the architectural design of the “proletarian capital”. He headed the construction of the first stage of the Moscow Metro. Attracted N.S. Khrushchev to work in Moscow. Kaganovich's role in the reconstruction of Moscow is exceptionally great. He personally gave instructions to the architects and held meetings with them. During reconstruction, many architectural monuments located in Moscow were demolished. Under him, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was blown up, but, despite popular belief, the initiative did not belong to Kaganovich himself, but to the Union of Architects.

Participation in Stalinist repressions

1932-33

On October 22, 1932, the Politburo, on Stalin’s initiative, decided to create emergency commissions in Ukraine and the North Caucasus to increase grain procurements. The commission for Ukraine was headed by Molotov, and for the North Caucasus - Kaganovich, but in fact he also participated in the work of Molotov’s commission as the head of the department of agriculture under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Soon Kaganovich left for the North Caucasus.

The Kaganovich Commission introduced the practice of listing villages that do not fulfill the grain procurement plan on “black boards.” This meant

a) immediate cessation of the supply of goods and complete cessation of cooperative and state trade on the spot and removal of all available goods from cooperative shops;

b) a complete ban on collective farm trade, both for collective farms, collective farmers, and individual farmers;

c) termination of all types of lending and early collection of loans and other financial obligations;

d) inspection and purification by the bodies of the RKI in collective farm, cooperative and state apparatuses of all kinds of alien and hostile elements;

e) seizure by the OGPU of counter-revolutionary elements, organizers of sabotage of grain procurements and sowing.

In total, during the work of the Kaganovich commission, 15 villages were blacklisted, as a result of which millions of people died of hunger. Also, during the fight against “sabotage”, in just a month and a half (from November 1 to December 10), 16,864 people of “kulak and anti-Soviet elements” were arrested in the North Caucasus region.

Not limiting himself to this, Kaganovich implemented such a measure as the almost complete eviction of residents of some villages who could not cope with the state supply plan “to the northern regions.” From only three villages - Poltava, Medvedovskaya and Urupskaya - 45,600 people out of 47,500 were evicted.

1937-38

In his report at the February-March plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1937, Kaganovich spoke out for the need for new repressions both in the People's Commissariat of Railways, which he headed, and in Soviet society as a whole. According to Kaganovich, " on railway transport... we are dealing with a gang of rabid intelligence officers and spies, embittered by the growing power of socialism in our country and therefore using all means of a savage struggle against Soviet power" Despite the fact that “sabotage” activities have already been revealed in almost all areas of the railway industry - railway design (“ We have sabotage in design. This matter is the most complicated, the most difficult... I will tell you later how you can solve it here."), their construction (" ...I believe that Turksib was built in a sabotage manner... Karaganda - Petropavlovsk was built in a sabotage manner by Mrachkovsky. Moscow - Donbass was built in a sabotage manner... Eikhe - Sokol was built in a sabotage manner..."), reconstruction and operation (" In 1934, the so-called dispatch conference was held... At this dispatch conference, almost all the speakers turned out to be saboteurs and were arrested as Japanese spies and saboteurs... The dispatch conference legitimized... the power of the dispatcher's order in order to have more opportunities to harm, delay trains, let them go in batches, etc. d."), - Kaganovich stated that " we didn’t get to the bottom of it, we didn’t get to the bottom of the spy-Japanese-German-Trotskyist-sabotage head, we didn’t get to the bottom of a whole number of their cells that were on the ground", noting that " Tears over the fact that innocent people may be arrested are harmful here».

During the Great Terror, Kaganovich, along with other associates of Stalin, participated in the consideration of the so-called “lists” - lists of persons repressed with Stalin’s personal sanction. Signatures on the lists meant a guilty verdict. Kaganovich’s signature is on 189 lists, according to which more than 19,000 people were convicted and executed.

As a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Kaganovich approved a large number of so-called. “limits” (quotas on the number of repressed people according to NKVD order No. 00447 “On the operation to repress former kulaks, criminals and other anti-Soviet elements”). For example, on April 26, 1938, he, together with Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov and Yezhov, endorsed an affirmative resolution on the request and. O. Secretary of the Irkutsk Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the allocation of an additional limit for the first category of 4,000 people.

In 1937, Kaganovich made a series of trips to regions of the USSR (Kiev, Yaroslavl, Ivanovo, Western regions) to carry out purges among the party and Soviet leadership. In Kyiv, after Kaganovich’s arrival, several employees of the regional committee, as well as the director of the Kyiv Historical Museum, were arrested following a denunciation by a graduate student at the Institute of History Nikolaenko. She was subsequently declared mentally insane.

Participation in the Great Patriotic War and the post-war period (1941-1957)

In 1942 - a member of the Military Council of the North Caucasus and then the Transcaucasian fronts. On behalf of Headquarters, he participated in organizing the defense of the Caucasus. On October 4, 1942, the command post of the Black Sea Group of Forces near Tuapse, where Kaganovich was located, was bombed, several generals died on the spot, and the People's Commissar was wounded in the arm by a shrapnel. In 1942-1945, member of the State Defense Committee. By the end of the war, Kaganovich began to retire to more peaceful economic positions: from 1944 - deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, from 1946 to 1947. - Minister of the Construction Materials Industry - one of the most lagging industries, in 1947 - First Secretary and Member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, from March 1953 - First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, from 1952 - Member of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, from July 1930 to 1952 member of the Politburo. In 1955-1956, Chairman of the State Committee of the USSR Council of Ministers on Labor and Wages. After the war, Kaganovich began to lose the leader’s trust. Stalin met with Kaganovich less and less; he no longer invited him to his evening meals. After the 19th Congress of the CPSU, Kaganovich was elected to the expanded Presidium of the Central Committee and even to the Bureau of the Central Committee, but was not included in the “five” most trusted party leaders personally selected by Stalin. After the arrest of a group of Kremlin doctors, most of them Jews, who were declared saboteurs and spies, a new widespread anti-Semitic campaign began in the USSR. In some Western books, and in particular in A. Avtorkhanov’s book “The Mystery of Stalin’s Death,” one can find a version that Kaganovich allegedly violently protested against the persecution of Jews in the USSR, that it was he who presented Stalin with an ultimatum demanding that he reconsider the “doctors’ case.” Moreover, Kaganovich allegedly tore his membership card of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee into small pieces and threw it in Stalin’s face. Stalin was struck by an apoplexy: he fell unconscious. After Stalin's death, Kaganovich's influence briefly increased again. As one of the first deputy chairmen of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, he controlled several important ministries. Kaganovich supported the proposal of Khrushchev and Malenkov to arrest and eliminate Beria. Even earlier, he actively supported all measures to revise the “doctors’ case” and stop the anti-Semitic campaign in the country. His older brother M. M. Kaganovich was also rehabilitated.

Bias. Last years (1957-1991)

In 1957 he was declared a member of the “anti-party group of Molotov - Malenkov - Kaganovich” and removed from all posts. After the June 1957 Plenum, Kaganovich was gripped by fear. He feared arrest and feared that he would suffer the fate of the executed Lavrentiy Beria. In the end, there were not much fewer crimes on his conscience than on Beria’s conscience. Kaganovich even called Khrushchev and humbly asked him not to treat him too harshly. He referred to his former friendship with Khrushchev. After all, it was Kaganovich who contributed to the rapid promotion of Khrushchev in the Moscow party organization. Khrushchev replied that there would be no repression if members of the anti-party group stopped fighting against the party line and began to work conscientiously in the positions that the party would now assign them. And indeed, Kaganovich was soon sent to the Sverdlovsk region as the manager of the Soyuzasbest trust. In December 1961 he was expelled from the CPSU. Despite numerous requests, he was not reinstated in the party (unlike Molotov). However, he had the rank of personal pensioner of union significance and the privileges corresponding to this status. Bored by loneliness, Kaganovich often went out into the large courtyard of his house. In the company of old people, he became interested in playing dominoes and soon became the recognized champion of his quarter. The game of dominoes usually ended after dark. But, using some old connections, Kaganovich, with the help of local authorities, built a gazebo in the yard and installed light in it. Died on July 25, 1991 at the age of 97. The body was cremated, and the urn with the ashes was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery.

Family bonds

He was married to Maria Markovna Privorotskaya (1894-1961).

Secretary of the Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in the 1920s, B. G. Bazhanov wrote in his memoirs:

“Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich is remarkable in that he was one of two or three Jews who continued to remain in power throughout the Stalin era. Under Stalin's anti-Semitism, this was only possible thanks to Kaganovich's complete renunciation of all his relatives, friends and acquaintances. It is a known fact, for example, that when Stalin’s security officers raised before Stalin the case of Kaganovich’s brother, Mikhail Moiseevich, the Minister of Aviation Industry, and Stalin asked Lazar Kaganovich what he thought about it, then Lazar Kaganovich, who knew perfectly well that pure murder was being prepared without the slightest grounds, replied that this was a matter for the “investigative authorities” and did not concern him. On the eve of his inevitable arrest, Mikhail Kaganovich shot himself.”

However, if you believe the words of Lazar Kaganovich, Bazhanov’s memories do not correspond to reality.

L. M. Kaganovich: This case was not in Lubyanka, but in the Council of People's Commissars. There are a lot of lies and lies about this. Now about my attitude and about the conversation with Stalin, as if I said that this was the case of the investigator. This is a lie. And it was just like that. I came to the meeting. Stalin holds the paper and tells me: “Here is evidence against your brother, Mikhail, that he is together with the enemies of the people.” I say: “This is a complete lie, a lie.” He said it so abruptly that he didn’t even have time to sit down. "It's a lie. My brother, I say, Mikhail, a Bolshevik since 1905, a worker, he is a loyal and honest party member, faithful to the party, faithful to the Central Committee and faithful to you, Comrade Stalin.” Stalin says: “Well, what about the testimony?” I answer: “The readings can be wrong. I ask you, Comrade Stalin, to arrange a confrontation. I don't believe any of this. I ask for a confrontation.” He looked up like that. I thought and said: “Well, well, since you demand a confrontation, we’ll arrange a confrontation.” Two days later I was called. (I’m telling you this in documents; I haven’t told you this anywhere yet). But it’s a fact, that’s how it happened. Malenkov, Beria and Mikoyan called me into the same office where they were sitting. I came. They tell me: “We called to report an unpleasant thing. We called Mikhail Moiseevich to a confrontation.” I say: “Why didn’t they call me? I figured I’d be there.” They say: “Listen, the cases there are so solved that they decided not to bother you.” During that confrontation, Vannikov was called and pointed at him. And Vannikov was Mikhail’s deputy at one time. By the way, when they wanted to arrest Vannikov a little earlier, Mikhail very actively defended him. Vannikov even hid at Mikhail’s dacha and spent the night with him. They were close people. And when Vannikov was arrested, he pointed to Mikhail. And so they called Vannikov and others and staged a confrontation. Well, these show one thing, and Mikhail was a hot-tempered person, almost with his fists on them. He shouted: “Bastards, scoundrels, you are lying,” etc., etc. Well, they couldn’t discuss anything in front of them, they took the arrested people out, and they told Mikhail: “Please go to the reception room, sit down, we will call you again. And then we’ll discuss it.” They just started discussing it when someone from the reception room runs up to them and says that Mikhail Kaganovich shot himself. He actually went out into the reception area, some say into the restroom, others say into the corridor. He had a revolver with him and shot himself. He was a hot-tempered, temperamental man. And, besides, he was a decisive man and decided: I will not go to the investigative prison. And it’s better to die than to go to a remand prison.

• One day, the old Bolshevik A.E. Evstafiev, who spent about twenty years in prisons and camps and returned to Moscow only after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, was supposed to visit a friend living on Frunzenskaya Embankment. Absentmindedly, he walked past the entrance he needed, took the elevator to another entrance and called the apartment on the same floor as his friend’s. The door was opened by a very old man; Evstafiev recognized him as Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich, the former “leader of the Moscow Bolsheviks” and the all-powerful “Stalinist People’s Commissar,” whom he considered the direct culprit of his misfortunes. From surprise, Evstafiev could not utter a word. But Kaganovich did not recognize him and, saying: “You must have made a mistake,” he closed the door.

Kaganovich and the Shakhty case

The General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine L. M. Kaganovich wrote to J. V. Stalin on April 26, 1928: “In particular, it seems to me that it is necessary to strengthen the role of the GPU approximately so that in large trusts there would be large employees authorized by the GPU, like the transport authorities of the GPU. This reorganization must be carried out under the supervision and direct guidance of the leading officials of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission, otherwise, I am afraid that in reality, in terms of the structure and methods of work, we will not remain as before.”

Legal assessment of Kaganovich’s participation in Stalin’s repressions

On January 13, 2010, the Kiev Court of Appeal found Kaganovich, as well as Kosior, Khataevich, Chubar, Molotov, Stalin guilty of genocide in Ukraine in 1932-1933 (Part 1 of Article 442 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine - “Genocide”).

Awards

• 4 Orders of Lenin
• Order of the Red Banner of Labor
• Various medals.
• On November 5, 1943, he was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.

Opinions and assessments of Kaganovich’s personality

The official characterization of Kaganovich in the ITU in 1937:

Kaganovich is an outstanding, irreconcilable fighter of the party against Trotskyism, the right-wing opposition and other anti-party and anti-Soviet movements. Kaganovich developed himself as a political figure, as one of the leaders of the party under the direct leadership of Stalin and is one of his most devoted students and assistants in the fight for the Bolshevik unity of the party.

The Soviet Historical Encyclopedia, the publication of which began under Khrushchev, provides the following description of Kaganovich’s actions:

... Huge damage was caused by the grossest mistakes and perversions that could have arisen in the context of the emerging personality cult of Stalin. When, in the lean year of 1932 in the North Caucasus, the Lower Volga and most of Ukraine, collective farms were unable to fulfill assignments for delivering grain, a commission headed by Kaganovich was sent to the Kuban, which carried out mass repressions of party, Soviet and collective farm workers, ordinary collective farmers (forced seizure bread, dissolution of party organizations, mass expulsions from the party, eviction of the population of a number of villages to the northern regions).

The last General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, M. S. Gorbachev about Kaganovich and Stalin:

Stalin is a man covered in blood. I saw his resolutions, which he signed in batches together with Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich and Zhdanov. These five were the most proactive...

Address in Moscow

After his retirement and until his death, L. M. Kaganovich lived in the prestigious house No. 50 on Frunzenskaya Embankment (not far from the Frunzenskaya metro station).

Memory

Like many party leaders, the name of Kaganovich was assigned to territorial associations and settlements, in particular, in 1938 the Kaganovichi district of the Pavlodar region was named after him, but after 1957, when he was removed from all positions, the district was renamed Ermakovsky. Other objects were named in honor of Kaganovich.

In 1938 - 1943 Popasnaya, Lugansk region was called them. L. M. Kaganovich In the Kyiv region of the Ukrainian SSR there were settlements called Kaganovichi the First (in 1934) (the original name was Khabnoye, the modern name is Polesskoe), and Kaganovichi the Second (the birthplace of Kaganovich). In the Oktyabrsky district of the Amur region there is a regional center, the village of Ekaterinoslavka, formerly the Kaganovichi station. In addition, the name of L. M. Kaganovich was borne in 1935-1955 by the Moscow Metro, the laying out and construction of the first stage of which he supervised as the first secretary of the Moscow Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In 1955, in connection with new trends in the country's leadership and the naming of the metro named after V.I. Lenin, the station "Okhotny Ryad" was named after Kaganovich, which in 1955-1957 was called "Im. L. M. Kaganovich." In 1957, Kaganovich's name was removed from all objects named in his honor. Kaganovich lived since 1937 in a prestigious house in Sokolniki - Pesochny Lane 3. Where he had a duplex apartment (for security and drivers) and a garage, which can still be visited now.

Bibliography

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• “Local Soviet self-government” 1923
• “How the RCP(b) was built” 1923
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• “Personnel Problem” 1929
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• “Goals and objectives of political departments of MTS and collective farms” 1933
• “On the Cleansing of the Party” 1933
• “On the construction of the metro and the plan of the city of Moscow” 1934
• “On the task of party control and the control work of trade unions, the Komsomol and the press” 1934
• Chuev F.I. This is what Kaganovich said: Confession of the Stalinist Apostle. M., 1992.