Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev[b] (bornOvsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky;[c] 23 September [O.S. 11 September] 1883 – 25 August 1936) was a Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician. A prominentOld Bolshevik, Zinoviev was a close associate ofVladimir Lenin prior to 1917 and a leading figure in the early Soviet government. He served as chairman of theCommunist International (Comintern) from 1919 to 1926.
During Lenin's final illness and after his death in 1924, Zinoviev allied with Kamenev andJoseph Stalin in a leadership "troika" against Trotsky. The arrangement fell apart, and in 1926 Zinoviev and Kamenev joined with Trotsky in theUnited Opposition against Stalin. Zinoviev was removed from the Politburo and Comintern in 1926 and was expelled from the party in 1927. He, like Kamenev, submitted to Stalin and rejoined the party the next year, after which he held mid-level positions. He and Kamenev were again expelled from the party in 1932, due to theRyutin affair, and rejoined in 1933.
In 1934, Zinoviev was accused of complicity in the assassination ofSergei Kirov and was sentenced to ten years in prison. While imprisoned, Zinoviev was further accused of treason and other offenses during theGreat Purge, and was executed after ashow trial in August 1936.
Grigory Zinoviev was born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky (Russian:Овсей-Гершон Аронович Радомысльский) in Yelizavetgrad,Russian Empire (nowKropyvnytskyi, Ukraine), the eldest son ofJewish dairy farmers Aron and Reizy Radomyslsky, who educated him at home.[2] Between 1924 and 1934 the city was known as Zinovyevsk (Ukrainian:Зінов'євськ[z⁽ʲ⁾inoˈwjɛu̯sʲk]). Grigory Zinoviev was also known in early life under the name Hirsch. He later adopted several designations, such as Shatski, Grigoriev, Grigori and Zinoviev, by the two last of which he is most frequently called.[3]
Zinoviev studied philosophy, literature and history, and became interested in politics, joining theRussian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1901. He was a member of itsBolshevik faction from the time of its creation in 1903. Between 1903 and the fall of theRussian Empire in February 1917, he was a leading Bolshevik and one ofVladimir Lenin's closest associates, working both within Russia during the1905 Revolution and abroad as he moved across Europe. Zinoviev 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 andAlexander Bogdanov's followers. He left for Western Europe to support Lenin in matters of propaganda and party organization.[4] Zinoviev remained Lenin's constant aide-de-camp and representative in varioussocialist organizations until 1917.
Zinoviev spent the first three years ofWorld War I inSwitzerland. After theRussian monarchy was overthrown during theFebruary Revolution, he returned to Russia in April 1917 in asealed train with Lenin and other revolutionaries opposed to the war. He remained a part of the Bolshevik leadership throughout most of that year and spent time with Lenin after being forced into hiding in the period following theJuly Days. However, Zinoviev and Lenin soon had a falling out over Zinoviev's opposition to Lenin's call for an open rebellion against the Provisional Government. On 10 October 1917 (Julian calendar), he andLev Kamenev were the only twoCentral Committee members to vote against an armed revolt. Their publication of an open letter opposing the use of force enraged Lenin, who demanded their expulsion from the party.[5]
On 29 October 1917 (Julian calendar), immediately after the Bolshevik seizure of power during theOctober Revolution, the executive committee of the national railroad labour union,Vikzhel, threatened a national strike unless the Bolsheviks shared power with othersocialist parties and dropped Lenin andLeon Trotsky from the government. Zinoviev, Kamenev, and their allies in the Bolshevik Central Committee argued that the Bolsheviks had no choice but to start negotiations since a railroad strike would cripple their government's ability to fight the forces that were still loyal to the overthrownProvisional Government. Negotiations were started but Zinoviev and Kamenev had the support of a Central Committee majority only briefly as a quick collapse of the anti-Bolshevik forces outsidePetrograd allowed Lenin and Trotsky to convince the Central Committee to abandon the negotiating process. In response, Zinoviev, Kamenev,Alexei Rykov,Vladimir Milyutin, andVictor Nogin resigned from the Central Committee on 4 November 1917 (Julian calendar). The following day, Lenin wrote a proclamation calling Zinoviev and Kamenev "deserters".[6] He never forgot this conflict, eventually making an ambiguous reference to their "October episode" in hisTestament.[7]
Zinoviev soon returned to the fold and was once again elected to the Central Committee at theVII Party Congress on 8 March 1918. He was put in charge of thePetrograd (Saint Petersburg before 1914,Leningrad 1924–91) city and regional government.
Sometime in 1918, while Ukraine was under German occupation, the rabbis of Odessa ceremonially anathematized (pronouncedherem against) Trotsky, Zinoviev, and other Bolshevik leaders of Jewish descent in the synagogue.[8]
Shortly after the assassination ofPetrograd Cheka leaderMoisei Uritsky in August 1918 and the commencement of the five-yearRed Terror period of political repression and mass killings, Zinoviev said:
To overcome our enemies we must have our own socialist militarism. We must carry along with us 90 million out of the 100 million of Soviet Russia's population. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them. They must be annihilated.[9]
Zinoviev was responsible for Petrograd's defence during two periods of intense clashes withWhite forces in 1919. Trotsky, who was in overall charge of theRed Army during theRussian Civil War, thought little of Zinoviev's leadership, which aggravated their strained relationship.
In early 1921, when the Communist Party was split into several factions, and policy disagreements were threatening the unity of the Party, Zinoviev supported Lenin's faction. As a result, Zinoviev was made a full member of the Politburo after theXth Party Congress on 16 March 1921, while members of other factions, such asNikolai Krestinsky, were dropped from the Politburo and theSecretariat.
Zinoviev was one of the most influential figures in the Soviet leadership during Lenin's final illness in 1922–23 and immediately after his death in January 1924. He delivered the Central Committee's reports to theXIIth andXIIIth Party Congresses in 1923 and 1924, respectively, something that Lenin had previously done. He was also considered one of the Communist Party's leading theoreticians.[citation needed] One of the main functions of the Comintern wasBolshevization, whereby the proletarian revolution was postponed, and an emphasis was put on unconditional support for the Kremlin's foreign policy.[citation needed] The Comintern closely supervised many national parties, and reorganized them along Soviet lines, with a healthy dose of Soviet political rhetoric as well.[12]
Trotsky attributed Stalin's appointment to the initial recommendation of Zinoviev.[13] This view has been supported by several historians.[14][15] According to Russian historian,Vadim Rogovin Stalin's election occurred after theEleventh Party Congress (March–April 1922), in which Lenin, due to his poor health, participated only sporadically, and only attended four of the twelve sessions of the Congress.[16]
With Stalin and Kamenev against Trotsky (1923–1924)
During Lenin's final illness, Zinoviev, his close associate Kamenev andJoseph Stalin formed a rulingTriumvirate (also known by its Russian nameTroika) in theCommunist Party, playing a key role in marginalization ofLeon Trotsky. According to political scientist, Michael Reiman, Zinoviev was unable to assert a dominant position in the party on his own and that position passed onto Stalin.[17]
The triumvirate carefully managed the intra-party debate and delegate-selection process in autumn 1923, during the run-up to the XIIIth Party Conference, and secured the vast majority of the seats. The Conference, held in January 1924 just before Lenin's death, denounced Trotsky andTrotskyism. Some of Trotsky's supporters suffered demotion or reassignment in the wake of his defeat, and Zinoviev's power and influence seemed at its zenith. However, as subsequent events showed, his real power base was limited to the Petrograd/Leningrad Party organization, while the rest of the Communist Party apparatus came increasingly under Stalin's control.
After Trotsky's defeat at the XIIIth Conference, tensions between Zinoviev and Kamenev, on the one hand, and Stalin on the other became more pronounced and threatened to end their alliance. Nevertheless, Zinoviev and Kamenev helped Stalin retain his position asGeneral Secretary of the Central Committee at theXIIIth Party Congress in May–June 1924 during the firstLenin's Testament controversy.
After a brief lull in the summer of 1924, Trotsky publishedLessons of October, an extensive summary of the events of 1917. In the article, Trotsky described Zinoviev's and Kamenev's opposition to the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, something that the two would have preferred left unmentioned. This started a new round of intra-party struggle, with Zinoviev and Kamenev once again allied with Stalin against Trotsky. They and their supporters accused Trotsky of various mistakes during theRussian Civil War in order to damage his reputation, and alleged that he was plotting a military coup. This campaign prompted Trotsky to resign in protest asPeople's Commissar of Army and Fleet Affairs and Chairman of theRevolutionary Military Council in January 1925, stating that the constant political attacks made it impossible to carry out his duties as military leader. Zinoviev further demanded Trotsky's expulsion from the Communist Party, but Stalin refused to go along at that time and played the role of a mediator.
With Trotsky finally on the sidelines, the Zinoviev-Kamenev-Stalin triumvirate began to crumble early in 1925. The two sides spent most of the year lining up support behind the scenes. Stalin struck an alliance with a Communist Party theoretician andPravda editorNikolai Bukharin and Soviet prime ministerAlexei Rykov. Zinoviev and Kamenev allied with Lenin's widow,Nadezhda Krupskaya, andGrigory Sokolnikov, the Soviet Commissar ofFinance and a non-voting Politburo member. The struggle became open at the September 1925 meeting of the Central Committee and came to a head at theXIVth Party Congress in December 1925. With only the Leningrad delegation behind them, Zinoviev and Kamenev found themselves in a tiny minority and were soundly defeated. Zinoviev was re-elected to the Politburo, but his ally Kamenev was demoted from a full member to a non-voting member and Sokolnikov was dropped altogether, while Stalin had more of his allies elected to the Politburo. Within weeks of the Congress, Stalin wrested control of the Leningrad party organization and government from Zinoviev and had him dismissed from all regional posts, leaving only the Comintern as a possible power base for Zinoviev.
According to Rogovin, Zinoviev would later lambast Stalin with the words, "Does comrade Stalin know what gratitude is?", as a reminder that Kamenev and himself had saved him from political downfall with the censure of Lenin's testament during theThirteenth Congress. Stalin responded with the words: "But of course I know, I know very well - it's an illness that afflicts dogs".[18]
With Trotsky and Kamenev against Stalin (1926–1927)
“We say that there can now be no doubt whatever that, as the evolution of the directing line of the faction (i.e., the majority of the Central Committee) has shown, the main core of the 1923 opposition correctly warned against the danger of a shift from the proletarian line, and against the ominous growth of the apparatus regime.”
During a lull in the intra-party fighting in the spring of 1926, Zinoviev, Kamenev and their supporters gravitated closer to Trotsky's supporters and the two groups soon formed an alliance, which also incorporated some smaller opposition groups within the Communist Party. The alliance became known as theUnited Opposition. In May 1926, Stalin, weighing his options in a letter toVyacheslav Molotov, directed his supporters to concentrate their attacks on Zinoviev since the latter was intimately familiar with Stalin's methods from their time together in the triumvirate. Following Stalin's orders, his supporters accused Zinoviev of using the Comintern apparatus in support of factional activities (theLashevich Affair) and Zinoviev was dismissed from the Politburo after a tumultuous Central Committee meeting in July 1926. Soon thereafter the office of the Comintern Chairman was abolished, and Zinoviev lost his last important post.
Zinoviev remained in opposition to Stalin throughout 1926 and 1927, resulting in his expulsion from the Central Committee in October 1927. When the United Opposition tried to organize independent demonstrations commemorating the 10th anniversary of the October revolution in November 1927, the demonstrators were dispersed by force and Zinoviev and Trotsky were expelled from the Communist Party on 12 November. Their leading supporters, from Kamenev down, were expelled in December 1927 by theXVth Party Congress, which paved the way for mass expulsions of rank-and-file oppositionists as well as internal exile of opposition leaders in early 1928.
The leadership of the USSR, April 1925. In the photo, taken in the Kremlin:Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party;Alexei Rykov, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (Prime Minister);Lev Kamenev, Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (Deputy Prime Minister); Grigory Zinoviev, Chairman of the Comintern's Executive Committee
While Trotsky remained firm in his opposition to Stalin after his expulsion from the Party and subsequent exile, Zinoviev and Kamenev capitulated almost immediately and called on their supporters to follow suit. They wrote open letters acknowledging their mistakes and were readmitted to the Communist Party after a six-month cooling off period. They never regained their Central Committee seats, but they were given mid-level positions within the Soviet bureaucracy. Bukharin, then at the beginning of his short and ill-fated struggle with Stalin, courted Kamenev and, indirectly, Zinoviev during the summer of 1928. This was soon reported to Stalin and used against Bukharin as proof of his factionalism.
After once more admitting their supposed mistakes, they were readmitted to the Party in December 1933. They were forced to make self-flagellating speeches at theXVIIth Party Congress in January 1934, with Stalin parading his erstwhile political opponents, now defeated and outwardly contrite.
After the murder ofSergei Kirov on 1 December 1934 (which served as one of the triggers for theGreat Purge of the Soviet Communist Party),[citation needed] Zinoviev, Kamenev and their closest associates were once again expelled from the party and arrested the same month. They were tried in January 1935 and forced to admit "moral complicity" in Kirov's assassination. Zinoviev was sentenced to 10 years in prison and his supporters to various prison terms.
In August 1936, after months of rehearsals in secret police prisons, Zinoviev, Kamenev and 14 others, mostlyOld Bolsheviks, were put on trial again. This time, the charges included forming a terrorist organization that killed Kirov and tried to kill Stalin and other leaders of the Soviet government. ThisTrial of the Sixteen (or the trial of the "Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center") was the firstMoscow Show Trial and set the stage for subsequent show trials where Old Bolsheviks confessed to increasingly elaborate and egregious crimes, including espionage, poisoning and sabotage. Zinoviev and the other defendants were found guilty on 24 August 1936.
Before the trial, Zinoviev and Kamenev had agreed to plead guilty to the false charges on the condition that they not be executed, a condition that Stalin accepted, stating "that goes without saying". A few hours after their conviction, Stalin ordered their execution that night.[20] Shortly after midnight, on the morning of 25 August, Zinoviev and Kamenev were executed by firing squad.
Police photographs of Zinoviev, taken by theNKVD in prison in 1936.
Accounts of Zinoviev's execution vary, with some having him beg and plead for his life, prompting the stoic Kamenev to tell Zinoviev to "quiet down anddie with dignity". Zinoviev allegedly struggled against the guards escorting him so fiercely that instead of taking him to the appointed execution room, he was simply dragged into a nearby cell and shot there.[21]
Zinoviev's futile pleading was later re-enacted and mocked by Stalin's personal bodyguard,Karl Pauker.[22] Stalin was described to have "laughed immoderately on seeing an imitation of the old Bolshevik leader Grigori Zinoviev being dragged to his execution, makingpleas for mercy with obscenities".[23][24][25] And Stalin was told Zinoviev's last words were "Hear, O Israel ..."[26] Pauker would himself later perish in the purges.[27]
Zinoviev was the alleged author of the "Zinoviev Letter" which caused a sensation in theUnited Kingdom when published on 25 October 1924, four days before ageneral election. The letter called on BritishCommunists to prepare for revolution. This document is now generally accepted to have been afabrication, validating the declaration that Zinoviev made in a letter dated 27 October 1924:
The letter of 15 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 theExecutive Committee of the Third Communist International; the official name isExecutive 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 15 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,[d] did not refrain from making use of such a white-guardist forgery.[29]
^The letter was published in December, afterRamsay MacDonald, the first prime minister from the socialist Labour Party, had been replaced with the ConservativeStanley Baldwin. A footnote clarifies that the letter was written while MacDonald was still prime minister.
^Zinoviev cynically referred to this in his eulogy ofMoisei Uritsky (the chief of the Petrograd Cheka, assassinated on 30 August 1918): "When we read that in Odessa, under Skoropadsky, the rabbis assembled in special council, and there these representatives of the rich Jews, officially, before the entire world, excommunicated from the Jewish community such Jews as Trotsky and me, your obedient servant, and others – no single hair of any of us has turned gray because of grief"; Zinoviev, Sochineniia, 16:224, quoted in Bezbozhnik [The godless], no. 20 (12 September 1938).
^Rogovin, Vadim Zakharovich (2021).Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years. Mehring Books. p. 61.ISBN978-1-893638-97-6.
^Reiman., Michael (1992).Trotsky and the struggle for "Lenin's heritage". In The Trotsky reappraisal. Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds). Edinburgh University Press. pp. 46–48.ISBN978-0-7486-0317-6.
^Rogovin, Vadim Zakharovich (2021).Was There an Alternative? Trotskyism: a Look Back Through the Years. Mehring Books. p. 257.ISBN978-1-893638-97-6.
Corney, Frederick C. (ed.),Trotsky's Challenge: The "Literary Discussion" of 1924 and the Fight for the Bolshevik Revolution. [2016] Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017.
McDermott, Kevin, and Jeremy Agnew.The Comintern: a history of international communism from Lenin to Stalin (Macmillan International Higher Education, 1996).
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