Zinoviev was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution: Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov. Zinoviev is best remembered as the longtime head of the Communist International and the architect of several failed attempts to transform Germany into a communist country during the early 1920s.
Background
Gregory Zinoviev was born in Yelizavetgrad, Russian Empire (now Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine), to Jewish dairy farmers, who educated him at home. Between 1923 and 1935 the city was known as Zinovyevsk. Gregory Zinoviev was known in early life under the names of Apfelbaum or Radomyslovsky and later adopted several designations, such as Shatski, Grigoriev, Grigori and Zinoviev, by the two last of which he is most frequently called.
Education
He studied philosophy, literature and history. He became interested in politics, and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1901. He was a member of its Bolshevik faction from the time of its creation in 1903. Between 1903 and the fall of the Russian Empire in February 1917, he was a leading Bolshevik and one of Vladimir Lenin's closest associates, working both within Russia and abroad as circumstances permitted. He was elected to the RSDLP's Central Committee in 1907 and sided with Lenin in 1908 when the Bolshevik faction split into Lenin's supporters and Alexander Bogdanov's followers. Zinoviev remained Lenin's constant aide-de-camp and representative in various socialist organizations until 1917.
Career
Zinovyev was Lenin’s principal collaborator in the period 1909–17, living in France, Austria, or Switzerland. He took part in the struggles against the militant Bolsheviks who opposed Lenin’s leadership and also against the Mensheviks and Leon Trotsky. He was active in directing Bolshevik organizations in Russia and the activities of the Bolshevik deputies in the Duma. During World War I he tried to organize the “internationalists” among the European socialists.
In April 1917, after the February Revolution had overthrown the monarchy, Zinovyev accompanied Lenin on his return to Russia. But in October, when Lenin insisted that the Bolsheviks seize power, Zinovyev and his close associate Lev B. Kamenev opposed him and even leaked information about the proposed coup d’état to the press. Immediately after the October Revolution he again dissented, vainly demanding that his colleagues include members from other socialist parties in the government. To symbolize his protest, he resigned from the Bolshevik Central Committee (November 1917).
Nevertheless, Zinovyev was soon restored to his position as a principal Bolshevik leader. An outstanding orator, he helped win public support for the new regime, and by 1921 he had become head of the Petrograd (later Leningrad) party organization, chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, and a full member of the party’s Politburo. In 1919 he also became chairman of the executive committee of the newly established Communist International (Comintern), which, dominated by the Russian Communists, formulated socialist policies and coordinated the activities of its member parties. (In conjunction with that post he achieved international notoriety when in 1924 the London press published a letter, allegedly written by him, instructing British communists to conduct subversive activities. The publication of the letter was considered to be the cause of the downfall of Britain’s first Labour government.)
In the early 1920s Zinovyev formed a coalition in the Politburo with Kamenev and Stalin to prevent Leon Trotsky from succeeding Lenin, who had become seriously ill and died in January 1924. But after the triumvirate had eliminated Trotsky as a serious contender in the power struggle (by early 1925), Stalin turned against his former allies. Neither Zinovyev’s control over the Leningrad party organization and the Comintern nor his belated political alliance with Trotsky (1926) proved sufficient to preserve his position of authority and influence in the party. By the end of 1926 he had been forced out of the Politburo and the Comintern, and in 1927 he was expelled from the Communist Party.
Although he was subsequently readmitted to the party, he never recovered his former prestige and was expelled again on two other occasions (1932 and 1934). In 1935 he was arrested, secretly tried for “moral complicity” in the assassination of the party leader Sergey Mironovich Kirov (December 1934), and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment. The following year, however, he was retried at the first Great Purge trial, found guilty on the fabricated charge of forming a terrorist organization to assassinate Kirov and other Soviet leaders, and executed. In 1988 the Soviet Supreme Court annulled the sentence posthumously.
Personality
Zinoviev is remembered in Britain as the alleged author of the "Zinoviev Letter" which caused a sensation when published on October 25, 1924, four days before a general election. The letter called on British Communists to prepare for revolution. This document is now generally accepted to have been a fabrication, validating the declaration that Zinoviev made in a letter dated 27 October 1924:
"The letter of 15th September, 1924, which has been attributed to me, is from the first to the last word, a forgery. Let us take the heading. The organisation of which I am the president never describes itself officially as the Executive Committee of the Third Communist International; the official name is Executive Committee of the Communist International. Equally incorrect is the signature, The Chairman of the Presidium. The forger has shown himself to be very stupid in his choice of the date. On the 15th of September, 1924, I was taking a holiday in Kislovodsk, and, therefore, could not have signed any official letter....
It is not difficult to understand why some of the leaders of the Liberal-Conservative bloc had recourse to such methods as the forging of documents. Apparently they seriously thought they would be able, at the last minute before the elections, to create confusion in the ranks of those electors who sincerely sympathise with the Treaty between England and the Soviet Union. It is much more difficult to understand why the English Foreign Office, which is still under the control of the Prime Minister, MacDonald, did not refrain from making use of such a white-guardist forgery."