Gregory Zinoviev was born in Yelizavetgrad, Ukraine, Russia on 23rd
September, 1883. The son of a Jewish diary
farmers, Zinoviev received no formal schooling and was educated at
home. At the age of fourteen he found work as a clerk.
Zinoviev
joined the Social Democratic Party in 1901.
He became involved in trade union activities and as a result of police
persecution he left Russia and went to live in Berlin before moving
on to Paris. In 1903 Zinoviev met Vladimir
Lenin and George Plekhanov in Switzerland.
At the
Second Congress of the Social Democratic Party in London
in 1903, there was a dispute between Vladimir
Lenin and Jules Martov, two of the
party's main leaders. Lenin argued for a small party of professional
revolutionaries with alarge fringe of non-party sympathisers and supporters.
Martov disagreed believing it was better to have a large party of
activists. Martov won the vote 28-23 but Lenin was unwilling to accept
the result and formed a faction known as the Bolsheviks.
Those who remained loyal to Martov became known as Mensheviks.
Zinoviev
joined the Bolsheviks. So also did
Lev Kamenev, Anatoli
Lunacharsky, Joseph Stalin, Mikhail
Lashevich, Nadezhda Krupskaya,
Alexei Rykov, Yakov
Sverdlov, Mikhail Frunze, Maxim
Litvinov, Vladimir Antonov, Felix
Dzerzhinsky, Gregory Ordzhonikidze,
and Alexander Bogdanov. Whereas George
Plekhanov, Pavel Axelrod, Leon
Trotsky, Lev Deich, Vladimir
Antonov-Ovseenko,
Irakli Tsereteli, Moisei
Uritsky, Noi Zhordania and Fedor
Dan supported Jules Martov.
In the
autumn of 1903 Zinoviev returned to Russia where he became involved
in the publication of Iskra. The
following year he moved to Switzerland where he studied chemistry
at Berne University. He also continued to contribute to Bolshevik
journals such as Vperyod.
With the
outbreak of the 1905 Revolution Zinoviev
returned to Russia and helped organize the general strike in St. Petersburg.
Taken seriously ill with heart trouble, Zinoviev was forced to abandon
the struggle and receive treatment abroad.
Zinoviev
returned to Russia in March, 1906, and over the next three years agitated
amongst metalworkers in St. Petersburg. As one of the key leaders
of the Bolsheviks, Zinoviev was involved
in the struggle with the Mensheviks
for control over the workers and the armed forces in the city.
In 1907
Zinoviev attended the London Party Congress and was elected to the
six man Bolshevik Central Committee. The following year Zinoviev was
arrested by the Okhrana but was later
released without charge.
Afraid
of being re-arrested, Zinoviev moved to Geneva where he worked with
Vladimir Lenin and Lev
Kamenev in the publication of Proletary.
Although living in exile, he helped to organize the publication of
Zvezda and Pravda
in St. Petersburg.
In
1912 Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev and Vladimir
Lenin moved to Krakow in Galicia to be closer to Russia. On the
outbreak of the First
World War they were forced to move to the neutral Switzerland.
After the overthrow of Nicholas II in
1917, Zinoviev, Vladimir Lenin
and Lev Kamenev returned to Russia and
joined with Leon Trotsky and others in
plotting against the government being led by Alexander
Kerensky. Soon after arriving in St. Petersburg, Lenin and Zinoviev
published their views on how to achieve a Marxist
revolution. Zinoviev also became the new editor of Pravda.
The Bolshevik
Party feared that Zinoviev and Vladimir
Lenin
would be arrested and so on the 9th July, 1917, they went into hiding.
Zinoviev returned in August and worked for Proletary
and Rabachii Put.
At a meeting
of the Central Committee on 9th October, Zinoviev and Lev
Kamenev were the only members opposed to Lenin's call for revolution.
He later changed his mind and took part in the October
Revolution that brought the Bolsheviks
to power.
In February, 1917, Zinoviev was elected Chairman of the Council of
Commissars of the Petrograd Workers' Commune. The following month
he became Chairman of the Council of Commissars of the Union of Communes
of the Northern Region. At the First World Congress of the Comintern
in March, 1919, he was elected chairman of the Executive Committee.
Zinoviev
reached the peak of his power in 1923 when with Joseph
Stalin and Lev Kamenev became one
of the Triumvirate that planned to take over from Vladimir
Lenin when he died.
After the
death of Lenin 1924, Zinoviev
joined forces with Lev Kamenev and Joseph
Stalin to keep Leon Trotsky from
power. In 1925 Stalin was able to arrange for Trotsky to be dismissed
as commissar of war and the following year the Politburo.
With the
decline of Trotsky, Joseph Stalin felt
strong enough to stop sharing power with Zinoviev and Lev
Kamenev. Stalin now began to attack Trotsky's belief in the need
for world revolution. He argued that the party's main priority should
be to defend the communist system that had been developed in the Soviet
Union. This put Zinoviev and Kamenev in an awkward position. They
had for a long time been strong supporters of Trotsky's theory that
if revolution did not spread to other countries, the communist system
in the Soviet Union was likely to be overthrown by hostile, capitalist
nations. However, they were reluctant to speak out in favour of a
man whom they had been in conflict with for so long.
When Joseph Stalin was finally convinced
that Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev were unwilling
to join forces with Leon Trotsky against
him, he began to support openly the economic policies of right-wing
members of the Politburo like Nikolay Bukharin,
Mikhail Tomsky and Alexei
Rykov. They now realized what Stalin was up to but it took them
to summer of 1926 before they could swallow their pride and join with
Trotsky against Stalin.
When Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev eventually
began attacking his policies, Joseph Stalin
argued they were creating disunity in the party and managed to have
them expelled from the Central Committee. The belief that the party
would split into two opposing factions was a strong fear amongst active
communists in the Soviet Union. They were convinced that if this happened,
western countries would take advantage of the situation and invade
the Soviet Union.
Under pressure from the Central Committee, Zinoviev and Lev
Kamenev agreed to sign statements promising not to create conflict
in the movement by making speeches attacking official policies. Leon
Trotsky refused to sign and was banished to the remote area of
Kazhakstan.
In 1935
Zinoviev was arrested and charged with being involved in the assassination
of Sergy Kirov. Found guilty he was sentenced
to 10 years' imprisonment. The following year he was charged with
forming a terrorist organization to kill Joseph
Stalin and other leaders of the government. Gregory
Zinoviev
was found guilty and executed in Moscow on 25th August, 1936.
(1) The Granat Encyclopaedia of
the Russian Revolution was published by the Soviet government in
1924. The encyclopaedia included a collection of autobiographies and
biographies of over two hundred people involved in the Russian Revolution.
Zinoviev
played a vigorous role in the Party electoral campaign for the third
Duma, whilst at the same time being fully involved in the clandestine
life of the Party. In spring 1908 he was arrested during an editorial
meeting on the Vasilievsky Ostrov. The Okhrana, however, was not fully
apprised of his activity. He fell seriously ill in custody and thanks
to the intervention of the late D. V. Stasov, he was soon snatched
from prison's grasp, being released under police supervision within
a few months.
(2)
Victor Serge, Year One of the Russian
Revolution (1930)
Zinoviev,
a collaborator of Lenin's since 1907, theoretician, popularizer and
orator, is defending, at Petrograd, one of the most advanced and most
threatened outposts of the Republic. As President of the Executive
Committee of the Northern Commune, he is the dictator of a great workers's
city, starving, cholera-stricken and vulnerable to surprise attack.
Zinoviev, with his tousled head, smooth, rather flabby face, nonchalent
stance, rounded gestures, deep, sometimes strident and always audible
voice, Zinoviev, with his merciless choice of words often confronts
and subdues, in the old capital's factories, the discontent and anger
of a proletariat whose best sons are at the front, and which is dying
of hunger.
(3)
Gregory Zinoviev, speech at the Eleventh Party Congress (1922)
I am speaking
concerning the fact that we constitute the single legal party in Russia:
that we maintain a so-called monopoly on legality. We have taken away
political freedom from our opponents; we do not permit the legal existence
of those who strive to compete with us. We have clamped a lock on
the lips of the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries. We could
not have acted otherwise. The dictatorship of the proletariat, Comrade
Lenin says, is a very terrible undertaking. It is not possible to
ensure the victory of the dictatorship of the proletariat without
breaking the backbone of all opponents of the dictatorship. No one
can appoint the time when we shall be able to revise our attitude
to this question.
(4)
The Granat Encyclopaedia of the Russian Revolution
was first published by the Soviet government in 1924. Revised versions
were published at regular intervals. The encyclopaedia included a
collection of autobiographies and biographies of over two hundred
people involved in the Russian Revolution. It included a biography
of Leon Trotsky.
In 1924
a collection of Trotsky's articles appeared with a preface entitled
'The Lessons of October'. In it the whole Bolshevik concept of revolution
underwent revision and the basis of the opposition platform became
the hypothesis of permanent revolution, that is, Trotsky's fundamental
error, his disparagement of the role of the peasantry in the revolution.
This led to the formation of a Trotskyite party and a struggle with
the Communist Central Committee. The latter could not reply to this
in any other way than by expelling Trotsky and the opposition from
its ranks.
(5)
Victor Serge,
Memoirs of a Revolutionary (1945)
Zinoviev,
the President of the Soviet, by contrast affected an extraordinary
confidence. Clean-shaven, pale, his face a little puffy, he felt absolutely
at home on the pinnacle of power, being the most long-standing of
Lenin's collaborators in the Central Committee: all the same there
was also an impression of flabbiness, almost of a lurking irresolution,
emanating from his whole personality. Abroad, a frightful reputation
for terror surrounded his name.
(6) Leon Trotsky,
Zinoviev and Kamenev (December, 1936)
Zinoviev
and Kamenev are two profoundly different types. Zinoviev is an agitator.
Kamenev a propagandist. Zinoviev was guided in the main by a subtle
political instinct. Kamenev was given to reasoning and analyzing. Zinoviev
was always inclined to fly off at a tangent. Kamenev, on the contrary,
erred on the side of excessive caution. Zinoviev was entirely absorbed
by politics, cultivating no other interests and appetites. In Kamenev
there sat a sybarite and a aesthete. Zinoviev was vindictive. Kamenev
was good nature personified.
I do not
know what their mutual relations were in emigration. In 1917 they
were brought close together for a time by their opposition to the
October revolution. In the first few years after the victory, Kamenev's
attitude toward Zinoviev was rather ironical. They were subsequently
drawn together by their opposition to me, and later, to Stalin. Throughout
the last thirteen years of their lives, they marched side by side
and their names were always mentioned together.
With all
their individual differences, outside of their common schooling gained
by them in emigration under Lenin's guidance, they were endowed with
almost an identical range of intellect and will. Kamenev's analytical
capacity served to compliment Zinoviev's instinct; and they would
jointly explore for a common decision. Both of them were deeply and
unreservedly devoted to the cause of socialism. Such is the explanation
for their tragic union.
(7) Gregory Zinoviev, speech at his trial
(August, 1936)
I
would like to repeat that I am fully and utterly guilty. I am guilty
of having been the organizer, second only to Trotsky, of that block
whose chosen task was the killing of Stalin. I was the principal organizer
of Kirov's assassination. The party saw where we were going, and warned
us; Stalin warned as scores of times; but we did not heed these warnings.
We entered into an alliance with Trotsky.
(8) The Observer,
(23rd August, 1936)
It
is futile to think the trial was staged and the charges trumped up.
The government's case against the defendants (Zinoviev and Kamenev)
is genuine.
(9) The New
Republic (2nd September, 1936)
Some
commentators, writing at a long distance from the scene, profess doubt
that the executed men (Zinoviev and Kamenev) were guilty. It is suggested
that they may have participated in a piece of stage play for the sake
of friends or members of their families, held by the Soviet government
as hostages and to be set free in exchange for this sacrifice. We see
no reason to accept any of these laboured hypotheses, or to take the
trial in other than its face value. Foreign correspondents present at
the trial pointed out that the stories of these sixteen defendants,
covering a series of complicated happenings over nearly five years,
corroborated each other to an extent that would be quite impossible
if they were not substantially true. The defendants gave no evidence
of having been coached, parroting confessions painfully memorized in
advance, or of being under any sort of duress.
(10) The New Statesman
(5th September, 1936)
Very likely
there was a plot. We complain because, in the absence of independent
witnesses, there is no way of knowing. It is their (Zinoviev and Kamenev)
confession and decision to demand the death sentence for themselves
that constitutes the mystery. If they had a hope of acquittal, why
confess? If they were guilty of trying to murder Stalin and knew they
would be shot in any case, why cringe and crawl instead of defiantly
justifying their plot on revolutionary grounds? We would be glad to
hear the explanation.
(11)
Victor Serge,
Memoirs of a Revolutionary (1945)
And on 14 August, like a thunderbolt, came the announcement
of the Trial of the Sixteen, concluded on the 25th - eleven days later
- by the execution of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Ivan Smirnov, and all their
fellow-defendants. I understood, and wrote at once, that this marked
the beginning of the extermination of all the old revolutionary generation.
It was impossible to murder only some, and allow the others to live,
their brothers, impotent witnesses maybe, but witnesses who understood
what was going on.
(12)
Leon Trotsky, interviewed by St. Louis
Post-Dispatch (17th January, 1937)
The Western attorneys of the GPU represent the confessions of Zinoviev
and the others as spontaneous expressions of their sincere repentance.
This is the most shameless deception of public opinion that can be imagined.
For almost 10 years, Zinoviev, Kamenev and the others found themselves
under almost insupportable moral pressure with the menace of death approaching
ever closer and closer. If an inquisitor judge were to put questions
to this victim and inspire the answers, his success would be guaranteed
in advance. Human nerves, even the strongest, have a limited capacity
to endure moral torture.
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