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2-07-2015, 17:17

Stalin the Cynical Flatterer

Stalin could also use the pretext of flattery and charm with extreme cynicism and cruelty on friend and foe alike. On September 25, 1936, Stalin bluntly informed the Politburo that Genrykh Iagoda should be removed as head of the NKVD ("Iagoda is clearly not up to the task . . . ”). On the next day, he composed the following memo demoting Iagoda to Minister of Communications:

Comrade Iagoda:

The Ministry of Communications is a very important matter. This is a defense ministry. I do not doubt that you will be able to put it back on its feet. I very much ask you to agree to the work in the Ministry of Communications. Without a good minister we feel as if we are missing our hands. It is not possible to leave the Ministry of Communications in its current situation.8

The memo was read [not clear by Stalin or by someone else] from Sochi to Iagoda on the same day at 21:30. Iagoda understood that this memo, which outsiders would interpret as praise, meant the end of his political career and ultimately his life.

It is a puzzle why Stalin engaged in the charade of asking Iagoda "to agree” to the new post and of telling him that without him there it would be like "missing our hands.” It could either have satisfied Stalin's enjoyment of mental torture or it could been out of caution. As head of the NKVD, Iagoda had at his disposal special troops and secret agents. Perhaps Stalin thought that flattering words would make Iagoda go quietly.

Lagoda waited six months for his fate to be sealed in a March 31, 1937, Politburo decree:

In view of the uncovered anti-Soviet and criminal activities of the minister of communication Iagoda, carried out during his work as commissar of the NKVD and also after his transfer to the ministry of communications, the Politburo considers it necessary to exclude him from the party and from the Central Committee and order his immediate arrest.9

Iagoda was convicted of espionage and other offenses in March of 1938 and was immediately executed and his body put on display of the grounds of his former dacha.