Zinoviev letter

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Zinoviev letter. Supposed to have brought down the first Labour government of 1924. It bore the signature of Grigori Zinoviev, president of the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow, and was addressed to the Communist Party of Great Britain, calling on it to sow subversion among the armed forces of the crown. There is a faint possibility that it was a forgery; and a stronger likelihood that it was deliberately ‘leaked’ by the British secret services, who intercepted it, shortly before the October 1924 general election, in order to scare voters over to the Conservatives. Conservative central office and certain sympathetic newspapers were also in the plot.

Bernard Porter

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