In 1930 Kaganovich became a full member of the Politburo and for the next five years acted as Stalin's deputy in the party. At the same time, he was appointed as first secretary of the Moscow party committee. In this period he acquired a real power base and won a degree of party and public visibility that marked him as a major political figure in the USSR. Moscow, the ‘red capital’, the headquarters of the party and of the world revolution, was of great symbolic importance. Kaganovich's role as party boss of Moscow, which embraced the city and the province, demonstrated the extent to which Stalin's deputies were allowed a degree of latitude in developing policy as well as the limits to that delegated power. The modernization of the capital was a central part of the regime's developmental programme in which ideological goals were to a significant degree subsumed under more pragmatic considerations. Moscow province was economically one of the most important regions of the USSR, having a population of more than 10 million people, including major towns such as Tula, Kalinin, Kolomna, Serpukhov, Podol'sk, Orekhovo-Zuevo, Ryazan' and Kaluga.

The Political Leadership of Moscow

Following the ousting of Uglanov as the secretary of the Moscow party organization in 1928, the post was temporarily filled by Molotov and then by K. Ya. Bauman. Stalin's article ‘Dizzy with Success’ in March 1930, signalled a major retreat with regard to collectivization.