"[3] On 7 June 1941, Kaganovich's former deputy Boris Vannikov was arrested after he had disputed a decision to halt the production of guns a month before the German invasion of the USSR.

Lazar himself denied this in several interviews, insisting that he had told Stalin directly that it was a lie and had asked that his brother be given an opportunity to confront his accusers.

"[6] Kaganovich was summoned to the office of Anastas Mikoyan, where, in the presence of Beria and Malenkov, he was confronted by Vannikov, who repeated the confession he had made under torture.

[7] A different account was given by Nikita Khrushchev during a delegation meeting with a Romanian representative in Moscow in 1964, in which he claimed that "Stalin interrogated [Kaganovich] personally, [a]fter that he was taken to the WC and shot".

[8] On 6 May 1953, two months after Stalin's death, Beria submitted a memo to the Praesidium of the Central Committee saying that the evidence against Kaganovich was "slanderous".