Grigori Evseyevich Zinoviev

Grigori Evseyevich Zinoviev , 1883-1936, Soviet Communist leader, originally named Radomyslsky. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor party in 1901 and sided with Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction after 1903 (see Bolshevism and Menshevism ). He conducted agitation in St. Petersburg during the 1905 revolution and was elected to the central committee of the party in 1907. After a brief period in jail, he went abroad in 1908. Zinoviev was one of Lenin's closest collaborators in exile (1909-17) and returned to Russia with him after the Feb., 1917, revolution. He and Lev Kamenev opposed Lenin's plan for the Bolshevik seizure of power in Nov., 1917 (Oct., 1917, O.S.), which they regarded as premature, but they were outvoted and abided by the majority decision. After the Bolshevik takeover, Zinoviev served as head of the Comintern (1919-26) and as a member of the Communist party politburo (1921-26). On Lenin's death (1924), Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Joseph Stalin formed a ruling triumvirate. Zinoviev led the triumvirate's attack on Leon Trotsky , calling for his expulsion from the party. After an initial victory over Trotsky (1924), Stalin, in an effort to consolidate his own power, turned against Zinoviev and Kamenev, defeating them and their so-called left opposition in 1925. Zinoviev and Kamenev then allied themselves with Trotsky (1926), but to no avail. Zinoviev was removed from his party posts in 1926 and expelled from the party in 1927. He recanted and was readmitted in 1928 but wielded little influence. Many features of the Zinoviev-Kamenev program, emphasizing rapid industrialization and collectivization, were incorporated (1928) in Stalin's first Five-Year Plan . In 1935, Zinoviev was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment purportedly for giving his encouragement to the assassins of Sergei Kirov . Accused (1936) of conspiring to overthrow the government, he was the chief defendant in the first of the trials held by Stalin, which resulted in Zinoviev's execution along with Kamenev and 13 other old Bolsheviks. In 1988, he was posthumously rehabilitated and the verdict of his show trial was annulled by the Soviet supreme court. The so-called Zinoviev letter was published (1924) in the British press. It was allegedly written by Zinoviev in his capacity as Comintern chief and contained instructions for Communist revolution in England. Although a forgery, the Zinoviev letter helped to defeat Britain's first Labour government in elections that year.

Bibliography: See E. M. Carr, The Russian Revolution (1979).

Zinoviev, Grigori Evseyevich (1883–1936) Russian revolutionary. A self-educated lawyer, Zinoviev joined the Bolsheviks in 1903, and was active in the Russian Revolution of 1905. He was a close collaborator of Lenin in exile (1908–17). In the Russian Revolution (1917), Zinoviev voted against seizing power but remained a powerful figure in St Petersburg and was appointed head of the Communist International in 1919. Although he sided with Stalin against Trotsky in 1922, Zinoviev was later expelled from the party and eventually executed. The ‘Zinoviev letter’ (1924), urging the British Communist Party to revolt, may have contributed to the subsequent electoral defeat of the Labour government, but has since proved to be a forgery.

Zinoviev, Grigori Yevseyevich (1883–1936) Soviet communist leader. Despite originally opposing the RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, he became chairman of the COMINTERN (1919–26). In 1924 a letter apparently signed by him (known as the Zinoviev letter) was sent by the Comintern to the British Communist Party, urging revolutionary activity within the army and in Ireland. Published in British Conservative newspapers four days before the general election, it may have swung the middle-class vote away from the Labour Party, who claimed (correctly) that it was a forgery. On LENIN's death Zinoviev, with STALIN and Kamenev, formed a triumvirate, but he lost power and was executed after Stalin's first show trial.