In the Soviet military unit No. 24565, located in the Karelian town of Suoyarvi, it was tense in March 1953. Barely had the tears of bitterness dried among the comrades after Stalin's death when a "cosmopolitan" in their midst, Private Kaganovich, was neutralized.

Private Sigmund Iosifovich Kaganovich was arrested at his place of service on March 18, 1953. A few days before that, the military prosecutor Kanunnikov, upon receiving information that Kaganovich was spreading anti-Soviet propaganda among the servicemen, decided to initiate a criminal case against him under the infamous Article 58-10 Part 1 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR.

The clouds above the soldier Kaganovich had been darkening earlier. It all started after the announcement on January 13, 1953, in "Pravda" regarding the involvement of Jewish doctors in the premature death of party leaders, the Jew Sigmund Kaganovich was brought up for political information. However, instead of "confessing for the Jews," the soldier spoke about something entirely different. First of all, Sigmund criticized the mental shortcomings of Lydia Timashuk, whose letter about improper treatment of a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks member Andrei Zhdanov was used by Soviet authorities in fabricating the "doctors' plot." Then he targeted the anti-Semites who had raised her. Right in the presence of the command and fellow soldiers, Kaganovich pointedly emphasized the involvement of party and security authorities in the "blood libel". Watchful comrades immediately reported this.

The enlisted soldier Sigmund Kaganovich, who fell into the hands of the Soviet punitive system, was a native of Kyiv.

He was born on April 22, 1931, into the family of Joseph Mendelevich Kaganovich, a locksmith at the "Arsenal" plant, and housewife Berta Iosifovna Fruman. Sigmund also had a younger brother, Dmitry. In the 1930s, Sigmund's father worked in the Party Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, but despite that, the Kaganovich family adhered to Jewish traditions.

Before the Soviet-German war, Sigmund managed to complete two classes. In July 1941, before the Germans occupied Kyiv, the Kaganovichs were able to evacuate to the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. When German troops approached Malgobek and Mozdok in September 1942, the Kaganovich family had to move to the settlement of Balkhash in Kazakhstan, and from there to Karaganda. In 1943, Joseph Mendelevich went to the front, leaving Sigmund with his mother and younger brother Dmitry in Kazakhstan. The family was able to return to Kyiv in December 1945, although life in the post-war city did not immediately stabilize. For several years, the Kaganovich family struggled to regain their previous residence – a room on Vladimir Street in a communal apartment with 36 residents. When they finally got their room back, Sigmund lived there with his parents, brother Dmitry, grandmother Manya Borisovna, and bedridden grandfather, Joseph Noskhovich. After the war, the parents of Sigmund's mother moved from Sochi to Kyiv.

Sigmund studied at Boys' Gymnasium No. 11, completing the first 7 classes. He did well in his studies, but it was difficult to call him a home boy. He befriended the street gang in Kyiv, ready to defend his point of view with fists and sharp words at any moment. Known as Zorik to his street friends, he didn't take the criminal path but was never one to back down from a confrontation. This trait played a cruel joke on him in 1953.

After graduating from school, Sigmund Kaganovich enrolled in the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute but had to drop out at the end of the first year. In the fall of 1948, his father, Joseph Mendelеvich, who worked for 'Myasomolsbyt,' was imprisoned on economic charges. To support his family, Sigmund took a job as a ticket inspector at the Kyiv Tram-Trolleybus Control. In September 1949, he found a more interesting job as a junior geological technician at the organization 'Promstroyproekt.' Just a few days after starting this job, he left for the Lower Don geological expedition, with its headquarters located in the town of Melikhovskaya.

Kaganovich worked on the expedition until March 1951, when he was drafted into the army. He served in several military units, but the longest stint was at Military Unit 51046 - the 8th Railway Brigade, where he initially performed duties as a photo lab assistant and later as a draftsman for a laboratory wagon for building materials, with access to classified documents. In addition to the excellent performance of his immediate official duties, Private Kaganovich was the leader of an amateur artistic circle in the unit. However, on January 28, 1953, without explaining the reason, Sigmund Kaganovich was unexpectedly transferred to Military Unit No. 24565.

The situation was as follows. Upon learning about Private Kaganovich's public statements regarding the "doctors' plot," the head of the Counterintelligence Department of the State Security Ministry (MGB) of the 8th Railway Brigade, Guard Colonel Golubev, immediately ordered the troublemaker to be removed from secret work. Sigmund was transferred to another place of service, his correspondence was subjected to "PK" (postal control - the term used for mail inspection at that time), and he was "put under surveillance" - assigned informants.

However, the soldier had no intention of remaining silent in his new assignment. It soon became known to the military prosecutor's office, which on March 13, 1953, began questioning witnesses. One of them, Junior Lieutenant Boris Makarov, deputy commander of the 3rd company in the political division, reported that in early March 1953, while in the company's office, he witnessed Private Kaganovich 'maliciously slandering' the Soviet Union. According to Political Officer Makarov, Kaganovich told other soldiers that 94 percent of American families owned a personal car. When Lieutenant asked where Kaganovich got such information, he did not answer but reinforced his thesis: "In the USA, a passenger car costs, in terms of our money, a hundred rubles, and therefore, everyone in America has the opportunity to buy one."
Well-aware of the risks associated with such reasoning, Junior Lieutenant Makarov immediately steered the conversation to another topic: "Before being drafted into the Soviet Army, you worked on the construction of the Volga-Don Canal. It would be better if you told our soldiers about the heroic deeds of Soviet people in building this structure." To this, Kaganovich told everyone present that the only things he saw there were barbed wire and towers with machine guns installed. "There were about a million prisoners working only on the construction of the Tsimlyanskaya Hydroelectric Power Station," he bluntly stated, chopping up the truth.

No matter how hard the political officer tried to silence Kaganovich, the soldier boldly declared for everyone to hear that in the Soviet Union, prisoners constituted about 10 percent of the population. In Cossack villages, where he managed to visit, the repressed were literally in every family. He also told his comrades about the devaluation of the Soviet ruble against the dollar, the attribution of foreign inventions to Russian scientists, and the dreadful bureaucracy that existed in Soviet institutions, dealing with unnecessary paperwork.

The fact of Kaganovich's confrontation with Political Officer Makarov was confirmed by witnesses: Private Anatoly Glistin, Lance Corporal Boris Belonin, the commander of the 3rd platoon of the 3rd company Junior Lieutenant Yuri Ivlin, and several other servicemen who were present in the office that day.

As it turned out, the fact of Kaganovich’s anti-Soviet statements was far from the only one. Interrogated on March 13, 1953, Junior Sergeant Mikhail Morin, the commander of the first squad, reported that when he lived in the same tent with Kaganovich at the end of February, he heard from him news about the division of power in the USSR. Private Kaganovich, who regularly listened to the radio in his laboratory, informed Morin that the "Voice of America" was reporting on the escalating conflict between Beria and Malenkov, who were preparing to seize power from the ailing Stalin. Kaganovich added that Stalin, too, had once eliminated competitors, such as the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR, Yezhov, and later got rid of his overly informed accomplice.

Sigmund Kaganovich was arrested and placed in the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) prison in Petrozavodsk. After a few weeks, on April 13, 1953, his case was transferred to Deputy Chief of the Counterintelligence Department of the MVD of the Northern Military District, Senior Lieutenant Yastrebov.

The investigator did not hide the fact that Kaganovich ended up behind bars after refusing to denounce his fellow countrymen at a political lesson "doctor's plot." However, they decided to attach other crimes to him, seemingly avoiding the sensitive topic. Well-informed about the soldier's past, the investigator initially attempted to accuse him of espionage in favor of the United States.

As a teenager, he lived with relatives on Pushkinskaya Street in Kyiv, near the mission of the American Humanitarian Aid, and befriended the mission's driver, who owned the only Studebaker car in Kyiv at that time. It should be noted that Kyiv youngsters had a "thing" back then — riding in all the trophy and allied cars in Kyiv. They kept lists of their rides, which they boasted about. The Chekists seized on this acquaintance between the guy and the American. They claimed that they knew and could prove that the driver from Utah, through Kaganovich, distributed leaflets that denigrated Soviet authorities. This version later fell away, presumably for political reasons, and they decided to charge Private Kaganovich with a more modest offense of "anti-Soviet agitation."

The servicemen, interrogated for the second time by Lieutenant Yastrebov, confirmed their initial statements. Some became witnesses for the first time but also incriminated Kaganovich with the same charge. For instance, the supply clerk of military unit No. 61345, Lance Corporal Moisey Rubinstein, who listened to "Voice of America" with Kaganovich, confessed during the interrogation on May 14, 1953, that Kaganovich not only used the American standard of living as an example but also criticized the national policy in the Soviet Union. According to Kaganovich, Jewish press and culture were destroyed in the USSR, and Jews suffered constant humiliations. According to him, this intensified, especially from his perspective, after the Israeli ambassador Golda Meir appealed to the Soviet government, raising the issue of allowing Soviet Jews to repatriate to Israel. Kaganovich suggested to his friend that a solution could be the compact residence of Jews in a separate territory. If not in Israel, where nobody was allowed to leave for, then at least in their own republic within the USSR.

The joint listening to "enemy voices" with Kaganovich was confirmed by another soldier, Rudolf Kukarskih. During a face-to-face meeting with Sigmund Kaganovich on May 21, 1953, Kukarskih added to the pool of anti-Soviet statements by his comrade with new facts: the arrested soldier claimed that American fishermen owned their own boats and motors, earning significant money from their trade. Another indication of the vast difference in the standard of living, from Private Kaganovich's perspective, was that in Murmansk, American sailors made good money off Soviet citizens by selling them "all sorts of stuff." The arrested soldier confirmed this fact, telling Investigator Yastrebov that an American sailor managed to get 25 rubles for a regular shirt, expressing his surprise about it on the "Voice of America" broadcast. According to American standards, this price was incredibly high, while in the Soviet Union, where light industry significantly lagged behind heavy industry, it was considered quite normal.

In addition to witness testimonies, Counterintelligence Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Northern Military District had another crucial piece of evidence - a personal diary that Sigmund Kaganovich kept from November 1946 to the day of his arrest. The diary, which consisted of three notebooks, was filled with various provocations.