Lazar M. Kaganovich, the last surviving member of Josef Stalin's inner circle, has died. He was 97.
Kaganovich presided over the dictator's forced collectivization that killed millions in the 1930s.He died Thursday night in his home not far from the Kremlin, said his housekeeper. The report was confirmed by a family friend answering the telephone at the home of his daughter, Maria L. Kaganovich.
Kaganovich joined Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Party six years before the 1917 Revolution and rose through its ranks to become the country's No. 2 leader after Stalin in the 1930s.
He remained in power under Nikita Khrushchev after Stalin's death in 1953. But in 1957 he was ejected from the party's ruling Politburo after leading an abortive coup against Khrushchev, who described him as Stalin's "chained cur and toady."
Khrushchev, leader of the first Soviet reform drive who was ousted from power in 1964, lumped Kaganovich with Vyacheslav Molotov and others into what he called an "anti-party" group. Kaganovich was demoted to manager of a cement works.
He retired in 1963 and for many years after could be seen occasionally engaging in idle chatter on park benches and riding the Moscow Metro, built as a grand monument to Soviet power under Stalin.