"This was the first arrest of a sitting member or candidate member of the Politburo—with no record of ever having opposed the party line—and a signal that no one, however senior, apart from Stalin himself, was safe.Stalin's crony Vyacheslav Molotov was asked, some 40 years later, to explain, and said that Rudzutaks was arrested because "he was too easygoing about the opposition and considered it all nonsense, trifles.