Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev (born Ovsei-Gershen Aronovich Radomyshelsky; – 25 August 1936) was a Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician. A prominent Old Bolshevik, Zinoviev was a close associate of Vladimir Lenin prior to 1917 and a leading figure in the early Soviet government. He served as chairman [predsedatel] of the Communist International (Comintern) from 1919 to 1926.
Zinoviev joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1901 and sided with Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks in the party's 1903 split, forging a close political relationship with him. After participating in the failed Revolution of 1905, he served as Lenin's aide-de-camp in Europe.
An advocate of multi-party socialist government at the time of the October Revolution, Zinoviev joined with party moderate Lev Kamenev in opposing seizure of power by the Bolsheviks ahead of convening of the elected Constituent Assembly — in which the Bolsheviks would have been a minority. When Kamenev defended his views in a non-party radical newspaper, signing both his name and that of Zinoviev to the statement, Lenin was outraged and called for the expulsion of the pair as "strikebreakers," despite Zinoviev's condemnation of Kamenev's action.
Zinoviev subsequently lost the trust of Lenin, who began relying on Leon Trotsky as his chief associate. Zinoviev was nevertheless elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet and the Comintern, and a full member of the Politburo in 1921.
During Lenin's final illness and after his death in 1924, Zinoviev allied with Kamenev and Joseph Stalin in a leadership "troika" against Trotsky. The arrangement fell apart, and in 1926 Zinoviev and Kamenev joined with Trotsky in the United 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 the Ryutin affair, and rejoined in 1933.
In 1934, Zinoviev was accused of complicity in the assassination of Sergei Kirov and was sentenced to ten years in prison. While imprisoned, Zinoviev was further accused of treason and other offenses during the Great Purge, and was executed after a show trial in August 1936.
Biography
Early years
Grigory Zinoviev was born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyshelsky (ru: Овсей-Гершон Аронович Радомышельский, simplified to Радомысльский) in Yelizavetgrad, Russian Empire (now Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine).Ȧsmund Egge, Grigory Zinoviev: Lenin's Right-Hand Man. London: Routledge, 2026; p. 7. He was the eldest son of Jewish dairy farmers Aron and Reizy Radomyshelsky, one of nine siblings.Egge, Grigory Zinoviev, p. 8. His mother's maiden name was Rozaliya Markovna Apfelbaum, a surname which is sometimes incorrectly cited as Zinoviev's original surname.
Ovsei-Gershon's precise date of birth is uncertain. Zinoviev in one instance offered September 8 (20 new style), 1883, as his date of birth; his "official" date of birth is reckoned as September 11 (23 n.s.) of that same year, however. Working from a birth register in an ethnographic museum, the Russian historian has claimed October 29 (November 10 n.s.) as the actual birth date, while a synagogue birth register indicates a date of September 28 (October 10 n.s.). This sort of discrepancy is not uncommon for births in the Russian empire in this era, with both Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky similarly subject to the confusion of "official" and "actual" dates of birth.
As a boy Zinoviev was taught at home during his elementary years, a common phenomenon for Jewish families of era in the Tsarist Pale of Settlement.Egge, Grigory Zinoviev, p. 12. He later asserted that he had finished five years of formal education in Russian schools, completing the high school curriculum. He reportedly worked as a clerk for a couple large-scale merchants during his younger years.
Early political activity and higher education
Zinoviev became interested in politics at a young age, reportedly beginning to participate in radical study circles [kruzhki] in 1899 at the age of about 16. This brought him into first contact with the labor movement in Elizavetgrad, which included semi-legal trade unions and informal groups of radicalized workers. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1901 at the age of 17 or 18. As a member of this illegal Marxist political party he assumed the first of a series of pseudonyms, "Seraya Shapka" (Grey Cap).
He soon gained the attention of the tsarist secret police, the Okhrana, and elected to emigrate to Western Europe in 1902, preferring the prospect of college to the prospect of prison. Briefly staying in Berlin upon his first arrival, he soon traveled to Freiburg and attempted — unsuccessfully — to gain admission to Freiburg University. After being dealt this initial academic defeat, he made his way to Bern, Switzerland — a country with liberal residence policies for foreigners and a reputation for easier access to higher education.Egge, Grigory Zinoviev, pp. 12–13.
Zinoviev was admitted to Switzerland's largest college, the University of Bern, in the fall of 1902, joining the mass of German and Russian students who accounted for about half the university's approximately 1,000 member student body.Egge, Grigory Zinoviev, p. 13. After completing the entrance examination, Zinoviev began studying for a degree in chemistry — a somewhat perplexing and never explained choice. He later moved to the Philosophy department. Zinoviev officially, albeit dubiously, remained at the University of Bern for four years, never completing his degree.
Politics again beckoned during Zinoviev's college years. He later recalled there were three organized radical groups on campus — the "Iskra Social Democrats", the "Bund Social Democrats", and the Socialist Revolutionary Party ("SRs").Egge, Grigory Zinoviev, p. 14. He met V.I. Ulyanov (Lenin) for the first time in November 1902 when the latter was in Bern to deliver a lecture, helping to cement his affiliation to the Iskrists. He was a member of Lenin's Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP from 1903.
Zinoviev also met his second wife during his Bern student days, partnering with Zinaida "Zlata" Lilina (party name Zina Levina), an emigre Jewish medical student two years older than he.
One who knew Zinoviev from his university days was Anatoly Lunacharsky, who moved to Geneva in 1904 to join the Bolshevik editorial team located there.Anatoly Vasilievich Lunacharsky, Revolutionary Silhouettes. Michael Glenny, trans. New York: Hill and Wang, 1967; p. 75. Speaking on campus in Bern, Lunacharsky was less than impressed with the student he met, eight years his junior. Lunacharsky recalled in 1923:
"Radomyslsky...did not immediately strike me as very promising. He was rather a fat young man, pale and sickly, who suffered from shortness of breath and was, I thought, too phlegmatic in temperament. [His companion] Kazakov never allowed him to get a word in edgeways. However, after we had been in permanent touch with them for some time we became convinced that Radomyslsky was an efficient lad..."
Thus the Zinoviev began his career as an active organizer in the youthful Bolshevik organization, comrades and peers with such future Communist Party leaders as Lev Kamenev (born 1883), Alexei Rykov (born 1881), and provincial activist Joseph Stalin (born 1878).Rudolf Schlesinger, History of the Communist Party of USSR: Past and Present. Columbia, MO: South Asia Books, 1977; p. 49.
Professional revolutionary
Zinoviev's first mission on behalf of the Bolsheviks came in the fall of 1903, when he was dispatched to Russia to attempt to build a party organization there.Egge, Grigory Zinoviev, p. 17. Using his hometown of Yelizavetgrad as a base of operations, Zinoviev traveled throughout the region on party assignment, including a mission to Kremenchuk, located about 65 miles to the north. He once again fell under the eye of the tsarist secret police and he was forced by this exposure to return to Burn late in 1904.
In January 1905, Zinoviev, his wife, and five others exited the joint Menshevik–Bolshevik social democratic organization in Bern and established a support group for Vperëd, the radical newspaper Lenin had launched after leaving the Menshevik-dominated Iskra. This small split-group issued a resolution explaining their decision, charging the Mensheviks with disorganizing the RSDLP and promising to fight against that tendency. A conference of the various Bolshevik city organizations in exile was held in Geneva in the middle of March of that year, and Zinoviev was elected one of five members of a coordinating committee to direct this "RSDLP overseas organization".Egge, Grigory Zinoviev, p. 18.
The Russian Revolution of 1905 having erupted in January, accompanied by a relaxation of state censorship of the press and the better opportunity for political organizing. In October, Zinoviev returned to Russia, this time to the capital city of St. Petersburg, where he joined the staff of the first legal Bolshevik newspaper, Novaya Zhizn''' [New Life]. He also spoke in public on behalf of the Bolsheviks throughout the city until falling ill towards the end of the year and being forced to return to Bern to seek medical treatment.
Zinoviev did not attend either the 3rd (London) congress or the 4th (Stockholm) congress of the RSDLP, held in the spring of 1905 and 1906, respectively.Egge, Grigory Zinoviev, pp. 18–19. He continued to work in St. Petersburg throughout 1907, taking time to attend the 5th (London) party congress in the spring of that year as one of the delegates of the Petersburg Committee.Egge, Grigory Zinoviev, p. 19. This would be the last joint congress including both the Menshevik and Bolshevik factions. Zinoviev was elected to two of the congresses' commissions and spoke to the gathering several times.
The London congress marked a turning point in Zinoviev's fortunes within the Bolshevik organization, as his oratorical skills came to the fore. His future nemesis, Leon Trotsky, then a particularly radical member of the Menshevik organization, patronizingly recalled much later:
"[A] young Petersburg delegate spoke. All had hastily left their seats and almost no one listenen to him. The speaker was obliged to mount a chair in order to attract attention. But notwithstanding these extremely unfavorable circumstances, he managed to draw an ever-growing press of delegates around him and before long the assemblage quieted down. That speech made the novice a member of the Central Committee."Leon Trotsky, Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence [posthumous, 1946]. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2019; p. 118. Cited in Egge, Grigory Zinoviev, p. 20.
Zinoviev was elected a candidate member of the RSDLP Central Committee by that 1907 congress, collecting 143 votes.Egge, Grigory Zinoviev, p. 20. More importantly, he was named to the parallel factional leadership, the so-called "Bolshevik Center". Following the congress (also attended by Caucasian delegate Joseph Stalin), Zinoviev returned to Russia, where he was a member of the Petersburg Committee and the governing "bureau" of the Bolshevik Central Committee. Although based in St. Petersburg, he traveled throughout the country on party visits, including a stay in the Ukraine, where he visited Odessa, Nikolaev, and Yekaterinoslav.