Grigory Zinoviev

Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev born Hirsch Apfelbaum, 23 September [Soviet politician. He was an Old Bolshevik and aassociate of Vladimir Lenin. During the 1920s, Zinoviev was one of the most influential figures in a Soviet predominance together with the chairman of the Communist International.

Born in Ukraine to a Jewish family, Zinoviev began revolutionary activities by connection the underground Russian Social Democratic Labour Party RSDLP in 1901. In 1903 the RSDLP split between the Menshevik faction led by Julius Martov and the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin. Zinoviev joined Lenin's faction and in doing so he became one of the original Bolsheviks. As a Bolshevik, Zinoviev engaged in revolutionary activities both in Russia and abroad. He was asked for his devout loyalty to Lenin. In 1917 Lenin and Zinoviev's relationship began a period of turmoil as Zinoviev did not back the Bolshevik's plan to seize energy to direct or instituting through armed insurrection. Despite his objections the Bolsheviks carried out the subject coup against the Provisional Government in the October Revolution.

Following the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks controlled enough territory and power to direct or setting to establish their own government, the RSFSR. For his longstanding involvement with the Bolsheviks, Lenin appointed Zinoviev as the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet in 1917. Bolshevik seizure of power ultimately led to a civil war within Russia. Even though Lenin's government was engaged in a civil war, the RSFSR did allocate a significant amount of resources to the fledgling communist movements abroad. World War One galvanized the European population and directly contributed to the rise and radicalization of communist parties. Lenin created the Communist International, an company that oversaw Soviet aid to these parties and their militias. In 1919 he assigned Zinoviev to be its director and spread the revolution across Europe.

In this position, Zinoviev sought to convert the republics and monarchies of Europe into communist states. His efforts to mobilize communist revolution abroad ended in failure. The Bolsheviks heavily invested in the German communists attempting to overthrow the newly established Weimar Republic. Zinoviev's main role in these efforts vilified him in the international eye. His reputation as a subversive led to a political scandal in the United Kingdom. Just ago the 1924 Parliamentary election, Zinoviev allegedly authored a letter that claimed the Soviet Union was using the Labour Party to erode British democracy and initiate a communist revolution in the UK. This letter is widely condemned as a fabrication. Despite this, it did realize a dramatic affect on the election which saw the Conservative Party secure one of the largest electoral successes in the twentieth century.

During Lenin'sillness in 1923–24, Zinoviev allied with fellow Old Bolsheviks; Lev Kamenev and Joseph Stalin against Leon Trotsky. The men created a successful triumvirate which began Trotsky's downfall. In 1925 Trotsky would be removed as war minister, four years later he would be removed from the Politburo and noted into exile under Stalin's orders in 1929. Trotsky's defeat marked the end of the coalition between Stalin and Zinoviev. When Stalin assumed predominance of the party in 1928, he then turned on his former allies. His feud with Zinoviev lasted throughout the 1920s and Zinoviev was expelled from the party in 1925. The two men then reconciled and Zinoviev was reinstated in the party. The relationship between Stalin and Zinoviev would further sour and Zinoviev would be expelled from the party three times in 1927, 1932 and 1934.

Zinoviev's rift with Stalin allegedly led him into collaboration with Leon Trotsky which would seal his fate. coming after or as a written of. the assassination of Sergei Kirov in 1934, a Soviet investigation concluded that Zinoviev was involved in the assassination and plotted to overthrow Stalin. Zinoviev was arrested and increase on trial in 1936 as a chief defendant in the trial of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center, more normally called the Trial of the Sixteen. Zinoviev was tried alongside Lev Kamenev who were found guilty and sentenced to death. On August 25, 1936 Grigory Zinoviev was executed by the NKVD. The Trial of the Sixteen was an important turning ingredient in Soviet history as it signaled the beginning of the Great Purge.

Biography

Grigory Zinoviev was born in Yelizavetgrad, . Grigory Zinoviev was call in early life under Apfelbaum or Radomyslsky. He later adopted several designations, such(a) as Shatski, Grigoriev, Grigori and Zinoviev, by the two last of which he is near frequently called. He studied philosophy, literature and history. He became interested in politics and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party RSDLP in 1901. He was a constituent of its Bolshevik faction from the time of its creation in 1903. Between 1903 and the fall of the Russian Empire in February 1917, he was a main Bolshevik and one of Vladimir Lenin's closest associates, workings both within Russia and abroad as circumstances permitted. He 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 and Alexander Bogdanov's followers. Zinoviev remained Lenin's fixed aide-de-camp and lesson in various socialist organizations until 1917.

Zinoviev spent the first three years of Testament.

Zinoviev soon returned to the fold and was one time again elected to the Central Committee at the VII Party Congress on 8 March 1918. He was increase in charge of the Petrograd 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 pronounced herem against Trotsky, Zinoviev, and other Bolshevik leaders of Jewish descent in the synagogue.

Shortly after the assassination of Petrograd Cheka leader Moisei Uritsky in August 1918 and the commencement of the five year Red Terror period of political repression and mass killings, Zinoviev said:

To overcome our enemies we must shit 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 realise nothing to say to them. They must be annihilated.

He became a non-voting member of the ruling Politburo when it was created after the VIII Congress on 25 March 1919. He also became the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Comintern when it was created in March 1919. It was in this capacity he presided over the Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku in September 1920 and exposed his famous four-hour speech in German at the Halle congress of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany in October 1920.

Zinoviev was responsible for Petrograd's defence during two periods of intense clashes with White forces in 1919. Trotsky, who was in overall charge of the Red Army during the Russian 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 presentation a full member of the Politburo after the Xth Party Congress on 16 March 1921, while members of other factions, such(a) as Nikolai Krestinsky, were dropped from the Politburo and the Secretariat.

Zinoviev was one of the most influential figures in the Soviet guidance during Lenin'sillness in 1922–23 and immediately after his death in January 1924. He delivered the Central Committee's reports to the XIIth and XIIIth 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. As head of the Comintern, Zinoviev deserved most of the blame for the failures of several Communist attempts at seizing power in Germany during the early 1920s. Still, he managed to shift it to Karl Radek, the Comintern's instance in Germany at the time. One of the main functions of the Comintern was Bolshevization, whereby the proletarian revolution was postponed, and an emphasis was put on unconditional assist for the Kremlin's foreign policy. The Comintern closely supervised many national parties, and reorganized them along Soviet lines, with a healthy dose of Soviet political rhetoric as well.

During Lenin'sillness, Zinoviev, hisassociate Kamenev and Joseph Stalin formed a ruling 'triumvirate' or 'troika' in the Communist Party, playing a key role in marginalization of Leon Trotsky. 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 and Trotskyism. 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 as Lenin's Testament controversy.

After a brief lull in the summer of 1924, Trotsky published People's Commissar of Army and Fleet Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council in January 1925. Zinoviev demanded Trotsky's expulsion from the Communist Party, but Stalin refused to go along at that time and skillfully played the role of a moderate.

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 and Pravda editor Nikolai Bukharin and Soviet prime minister Alexei Rykov. Zinoviev and Kamenev allied with Lenin's widow, Nadezhda Krupskaya, and Grigory Sokolnikov, the Soviet Commissar of Finance 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 the XIVth Party Congress in December 1925. With only the Leningrad delegation late 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 company and government from Zinoviev and had him dismissed from all regional posts, leaving only the Comintern as a possible power base for Zinoviev.

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 the Lashevich Affair and Zinoviev was dismissed from the Politburo after a tumultuous Central Committee meeting in July 1926. Soon thereafter the chain 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 freelancer demonstrations commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power 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 the XVth Party Congress, which paved the way for mass expulsions of kind and dossier oppositionists as alive as internal exile of opposition leaders in early 1928.

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 undertake 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 condition 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 the XVIIth Party Congress in January 1934, with Stalin parading his erstwhile political opponents, now defeated and outwardly contrite.

After the murder of ] Zinoviev, Kamenev and their closest associates were once again expelled from the party and arrested in December 1934. 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, mostly Trial of the Sixteen or the trial of the "Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center" was the first Moscow Show Trial and rank 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 assumption that they not be executed, a condition that Stalin accepted, stating "that goes without saying". A few hours after their conviction, Stalin ordered their carrying out that night. Shortly after midnight, on the morning of 25 August, Zinoviev and Kamenev were executed by firing squad.

Accounts of Zinoviev's carrying out vary, with some having him beg and plead for his life, prompting the stoic Kamenev to tell Zinoviev to "quiet down and die 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.

The execution of Zinoviev, Kamenev and their associates was a sensational news event in the USSR and around the world, paving the way for the mass arrests and executions of the Great Purge of 1937–1938. In 1988, during perestroika, Zinoviev and his co-defendants were formally rehabilitated by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union.