In the familiar line of cold, grey faces atop Lenin's cold, red tomb, watching the Red Square parades pass by, one mustachioed figure was always seen quite close to Stalin. He was First Deputy Premier Lazar Moiseevich Kaganovich, onetime tanner's apprentice who became an able and ruthless administrator. Stalin was rumored to have married Kaganovich's sister Roza, though this has never been established as fact.
An Old Bolshevik, Kaganovich supported Stalin against Trotsky in the fight for power after Lenin died and was rewarded in 1930 with a Politburo seat and the first-secretaryship...
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