Born to a Jewish family in Ukraine, Kaganovich worked as a shoemaker and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1911.

During and after the 1917 October Revolution, he held leading positions in Bolshevik organizations in Belarus and Russia, and helped consolidate Soviet rule in Turkestan.

After joining in a failed coup against Khrushchev in 1957, Kaganovich was dismissed from the Presidium and demoted to the director of a small potash works in the Urals.

Kaganovich was born in 1893 to Jewish parents[2] in the village of Kabany, Radomyshl uyezd, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (today Dibrova, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine).

Israel Kaganovich (1884–1973) was made the head of the Main Directorate for Cattle Harvesting of the Ministry of Meat and Dairy Industry.

Lazar also had a sister, Rachel Moiseevna Kaganovich (1883–1926), who married Mordechai Ber Lantzman; they lived together in Chernobyl for a period, but she subsequently died in the 1920s and was interred in Kiev.

In summer 1930, he was warned that Lenin's widow, Nadezhda Krupskaya had delivered a speech at a district party branch in Moscow, in which she criticised collectivisation.

In December 1930, when Vyacheslav Molotov promoted to the post of chairman of the Soviet government, Kaganovich replaced him as Stalin's deputy in the party secretariat, a position he held until February 1935.

In the 1930s, Kaganovich – along with project managers Ivan Kuznetsov and, later Isaac Segal – organized and led the building of the first Soviet underground rapid-transport system, the Moscow Metro, known as Metropoliten imeni L.M.

On October 15, 1941, L. M. Kaganovich received an order to close the Moscow Metro, and within three hours to prepare proposals for its destruction, as a strategically important object.

In July 1932, Molotov and Kaganovich travelled to Kharkov, then the capital of Ukraine, to order the Politburo of the Ukrainian Communist party to set a quote of grain procurement of 356 million pood a year.

Every member of the Ukrainian Poliburo pleaded for a reduction in the quantity of grain peasants were required to hand over to the state, but Kaganovich and Molotov "categorically refused".

[12] Later the same month, they sent the Ukrainian party leaders a secret telegram ordering them to intensify grain production and impose harsh penalties on peasants who failed to comply.

[15] The court's ruling also referred to Kaganovich's return visit to Kharkiv in December 1932, when, during a Politburo session that lasted until 4.00 am, Ukrainians present begged that peasants should be allowed to retain more grain for their own consumption and seeds for the next year's crop, but Kaganovich overruled them and messaged Stalin accusing them of "seriously hampering and undermining the entire grain procurement.

Poltavskaya sabotaged and resisted collectivization period of the Soviet Union more than any other area in the Kuban which was perceived by Lazar Kaganovich to be connected to Ukrainian nationalist and Cossack conspiracy.

[17] Kaganovich relentlessly pursued the policy of requisition of grain in Poltavskaya and the rest of the Kuban and personally oversaw the purging of local leaders and Cossacks.

[17] However Kaganocvich did not reveal in speeches throughout the region that many of those targeted by persecution in Poltavskaya had their family members and friends deported or shot including in years before the supposed Omel'chenko crisis even started.

Before the opening of the first of the Moscow show trials in August 1936, Kaganovich and Yezhov jointly reported to Stalin, who was on vacation, about progress in forcing the defendants to confess.

He was also in Moscow to facilitate Yezhov's appointment as head of the NKVD, after Stalin had demanded the sacking of the incumbent, Genrikh Yagoda, which Kaganovich praised as a "remarkable and wise decision of our father.

In Ivanovo, he ordered the arrests of the provincial party secretary, and the head of the propaganda department, and accused a majority of the executive of being "enemies of the people".

[22] In all Party conferences of the later 1930s, he made speeches demanding increased efforts in the search for and prosecution of "foreign spies" and "saboteurs."

[24] Kaganovich was appointed People's Commissar for Heavy Industry after his predecessor, Sergo Ordzhonikidze committed suicide, in February 1937.

From 1949, until Stalin's death in March 1953, Kaganovich was in a precarious situation because of the state-sponsored anti-semitism, culminating in the Slánský trial in Prague, and the Doctors' plot, during which hundreds of Jews, including Molotov's wife, Polina Zhemchuzhina, were arrested, and many were tortured and shot.

Kaganovich remained in office throughout, as the most prominent Jew in the Soviet leadership, but was no longer invited to meet Stalin socially, and "was lying low, watching the course of events in fear and trembling".

His grandchildren reported that after his dismissal from the Central Committee, Kaganovich (who had a reputation for his temperamental and allegedly violent nature) never shouted again and became a devoted grandfather.

[31] In 1991 Kaganovich was interviewed about the alleged murder of Lenin's widow, in which he suggested Lavrentiy Beria may have been involved with Krupskaya's poisoning and was quoted in 1991 saying "I can't dismiss that possibility.

Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva was equally emphatic, writing in a memoir published in 1969: Nothing could be more unlikely than the story spread in the West about 'Stalin's third wife' – the mythical Rosa Kaganovich.

Apart from the fact that I never saw any 'Rosa' in the Kaganovich family, the idea that this legendary Rosa, an intellectual woman ... and above all a Jewess, could have captured my father's fancy shows how totally ignorant people were of his true nature.

Mrs Kaganovich spent many years as a powerful municipal official, directly ordering the demolition of the Iberian Gate and Chapel and Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.

[49] Kaganovich's apartment consisted of two floors (an extreme rarity in the USSR), a private access garage, and a designated space for butlers, security, and drivers.