Was Stalin's third wife Rosa, the Jew Lazar Kaganovich's sister?
Did Kaganovich even have a sister named Rosa?
Arguments for and against follow:
Rosa Kaganovich in 1913, from the 1987 book
The Wolf in the Kremlin, written
by his great-nephew Stuart Kahan. Other members of Lazar Kaganovich's family
have stated the book
"is full of lies and slander"
and of the author, they had
no
"idea about his existence"
- and that Lazar had no sister named Rosa.
Svetlana Alliluyeva (b.1926) was Stalin's only daughter, her mother was Nadezhda, Stalin's
second wife. Svetlana defected to the West in 1967 and in 1969 published her second
book entitled
Only One Year
in which she denied Stalin married a Rosa
Kaganovich,
that she had ever even meet a Rosa Kaganovich, and Stalin would "fancy" a Jewess.
(see
Sebag's book below, for details of the Jewesses who did capture Stalin's fancy.)
Nothing could be more unlikely than the story spread in the West about "Stalin's third wife" — the mythical Rosa Kaganovich. Aside from the fact that I never saw any "Rosa" in the Kaganovich family, the idea that this legendary Rosa, an intellectual woman (according to the Western version, a doctor), and above all a Jewess, could have captured my father's fancy shows how totally ignorant people were of his true nature; such a possibility was absolutely excluded from his life.
British-Jewish historian Simon Sebag-Montrfiore wrote in his 2003 biography
Stalin: The Court of the Red Star, the rumour Stalin married Kaganovich's sister
Rosa was false, but Lazar did have a sister called Rosa, although she died in 1924.
click image to enlarge
British historian Robert Service wrote in his 2004 book Stalin: A Biography, that
the rumour Stalin married Kaganovich's sister Rosa, was Nazi propaganda, and that Lazar
never even had a sister called Rosa, the sister who died in mid-1920s was named Rakhil.
click to enlarge
Georges Bortoli, a French journalist, and specialist on the Soviet Union, wrote in
his 1973 book
The Death of Stalin; that Rosa Kaganovich was invented, but, not by
by the press alone(?). Although, all of the Soviet Union, had believed she existed.
Following is just some of the reports in the mainstream
media, that Stalin was married to Kaganovich's sister:
Stalin's obituary in
The Times
of London
click to enlarge
Close associates in 1930s said she existed & was Stalin's partner
Boris Souvarine (1895-1984) (left) and Isaac Babel (1894-1940) were both Jewish
Bolshevik writers. Souvarine's family left Kiev for France when he was only two, and
later in life he became a prominent communist politician. Babel was a famed Soviet
playwright, who was particularly close with a great friend of Stalin, Maxim Gorky.
Although Babel eventually fell foul of Stalin, and was executed for his Trotskyism.
An article which appeared in
Dissent, an American political magazine in 1981, was
a "somewhat abbreviated" and translated version of an article, written by
Boris
Souvarine which appeared in the French journal
Contrepoint
in 1979. In the article
Souvarine quotes the notes which he made following several meetings with Babel
during the 1930s. At one meeting during the summer of 1935, Babel and Souvarine
"speak of Stalin—for a change," Souvarine wrote:
Babel tells me that at the time of Alliluyeva's (Stalin's second wife) funeral, thousands of Chekists were posted along the streets leading from the Kremlin to the cemetery of the Monastery of the Virgins, and on the roofs of all the houses, and that all the windows were ordered shut. (I no longer know who told me that Stalin left the funeral procession en route and returned home.) Babel describes Stalin after his domestic drama as more solitary, gloomy, and closed-off than ever , and he adds—]
BABEL:
A woman had to be got for him. It wasn't easy. Finally, they found Rosa Kaganovich for him...
BABEL: (Hesitating, as if reaching for and weighing his words): Ah, well ... because ... you see ... well, in a word, it-was-a-mat-ter-of-sleeping-with-him!
[He assumed an appalled air, and his eyes widened with horror at the idea of
Rosa Kaganovich
being handed over to the Minotaur of the Kremlin. The grisly vision made an impression on me, too, and for a moment we were silent, then both broke into long, nervous laughter that made us feel better....]
Rosa Stalin was reported to have been present for the opening ceremony
of the Moscow underground, which was named after her brother. Many
other details of her are given in this 1947 article written by a seasoned
writer who spoke 10 languages, had travelled widely in Russia.
here
for a readable sized version
Following is some of the appearances of the phantom
Rosa Kaganovich in published books
American author John Gunther "travelled extensively through the area the book covered,
interviewed political, social, and business leaders, talked with average people, reviewed area
statistics, and then wrote a lengthy overview of what he had learned and how he interpreted it."
Translated from Russian and published in England in 1956
Face of a Victim
is the autobiography of Elizabeth Lermolo. A woman who fled Russia, arriving in the US in 1950. The book tells the story of the death of Stalin's second wife Nadezhda (Nadya) as witnessed by Natalia Trushina, who was employed as a housekeeper in Stalin's home, and who in 1937, Elizabeth Lermolo shared an NVKD prison cell with. The phantom Rosa (Roza) Kaganovich, with whom Stalin was allegedly having an affair, was whom Stalin and his wife were arguing about before she died.
click to enlarge
William Randolph Hearst, Jr. (1908 - 1993), son of the legendary William Randolph
Hearst (whose life Orson Welles' film
Citizen Kane
was loosely base upon), won a
Pulitzer Prize for his interview with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1955. In
1960 he published a book on the interview with further commentary, entitled Ask
Me Anything: Our Adventures with Krushchev. One again Rosa existed.
click to enlarge
Kruschev of the Ukraine
was published in London in 1957 by the Jewish publisher Victor Gollancz. It was written in French, by Russian exile Victor Alexandrov, who was born is St. Petersburg but moved to the United States. He wrote many books on 20th century Russia & the Soviet Union, mostly it seems in French. In this biography of Stalin's successor Nikita Khrushchev, Rosa Kaganovich did exist, and she married Stalin in early 1933.
Some quotes:
"... Rosa, the sister of Kaganovitch, was his mistress, and in the early weeks of 1933 he
married her. She was an extremely attractive woman of great intellectual ability ..."
"... Kaganovitch, Stalin's brother-in-law"
"... Rosa, when she became Stalin's wife, helped Bulganin in his career."
"Stalin would have saved him, just as he saved his brother-in-law, Yuri Kaganovitch."
"... Stalin and his wife, Rosa Kaganovitch"
click image to enlarge
Dr. Olga Narkiewicz was a scholar of European history at Manchester University
who wrote
many
books on Marxism, Stalinism, the Soviet Union & Eastern Europe.
In her 1986 book Soviet Leaders: From the Cult of Personality to Collective Rule,
the phantom Rosa is again an historical person, and Stalin's third wife.
click to enlarge
British historian Pierre Stephen Robert Payne wrote a biography of
Stalin published in 1971, in which a Rosa Kaganovich is mentioned
"At such parties he (Stalin) was always inclined to drink dangerously. Something said by Nadezhda - it may have beenabout another woman,
Rosa Kaganovich, who was also present, or about the expropriations in the villages which were dooming the peasants to famine - reduced Stalin to a state of imbecile rage. In front of her friends he poured out a torrent of abuse and obscenity. He was a master of the art of cursing, with an astonishing range of vile phrases and that peculiarly."
Ulster politician, barrister & biographer, Harford Montgomery Hyde,
who also wrote a history of pornography. Wrote in his 1971 biography
of Stalin, that Lazar Kaganovich did indeed have a sister named Rosa
"However, it has been established that after the birth of their second child Svetlana, Stalin ceased to share his wife's bed and moved into a small bedroom beside the dinning room of the Kremlin apartment. It has also been stated that, after the Georgian singer's departure for Afghanistan, the woman who was the chief cause of their difference was another dark-eyed beauty, the brunette
Rosa Kaganovich, sister of the commissar Lazar, with whom Molotov had previously had an affair. At all events, by 1931 Nadya was thoroughly disillusioned with her husband and most unhappy."
The Young Stalin
was published in 1967, written by Edward Ellis Smith. Details of
Smith are not easily found.
An
New York Times
article in 2007 state that he was the
CIA's first undercover officer in Moscow, but was
caught and thrown out of Russia
in 1956. The phantom Rosa is mentioned in Smith's book, again married to Stalin.
Igor Gouzenko, a Soviet cipher clerk was posted to the Soviet Embassy in Canada in 1943. He is often
hailed as the man who started the Cold War, as in 1945 he defected, and revealed many Soviet spies
Igor Gouzenko's wife, once a Soviet sniper, also defected with him, and in
1960 she published Before Igor, her memoirs of growing up in the Soviet
Union. She mentioned Rosa Kaganovich, and she claims Stalin divorced her.
More reports that Stalin divorced Rosa Kaganovich
Stalin's kid married Lazar Kaganovich's kid !!!
An article in TIME Magazine in 1951, claims Stalin's daughter Svetlana,
from Stalin's second marriage. Married the son of Lazar Kaganovich
Marriage Reported: Svetlana Dzhugashvili, 26, redheaded daughter of Joseph Dzhugashvili, better known as Stalin; and Mikhail Kaganovich, son of Lazar Kaganovich, longtime Politburo member and Stalin's brother-in-law; in Moscow, July 3. British and Swiss newspapers said the nuptial feast in the Kremlin lasted a fortnight, with refreshments served on Czarist gold plate and sped with pink Crimean champagne, sweet Armenian peach brandy and vodka. Cost: $280,000.
Svetlana Alliluyeva denied she married Kaganovich's kid,
as well as denying her father married Kaganovich's sister
Stalin & Kaganovich
click image to enlarge
