Grigori Zinoviev
Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev (born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky; 23 September [O.S. 11 September] 1883 – 25 August 1936) was a Bolshevik revolutionary in Russia whose Jewish parents were poor subsistence dairy famers in Ukraine. Zinoviev was a close associate of Vladimir Lenin.
Contents
Early days
Trotsky does not mention him in his history of the 1905 revolution. However he appears with Lenin in Paris in 1909, and again taking part in a discussion Lenin had the following year with the Jewish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg in Vyborg, when it was said Zinoviev was already rising to prominence in the party. In September 1915 Lenin and Zinoviev represented the Russian Bolshevik Party to the International Anti-War Conference held in the Swiss village of Zimmerwald. Thirty-eight delegates came from eleven countries. In April 1916 Lenin and Zinoviev attended the Second International Socialist Conference.
Back in Russia
Zinoviev accompanied Lenin on the train back to Russia in April 1917. On July 6th the Provisional Government of Russia issued arrest warrants for Lenin, Zinoviev [now ;leader of the Petrograd Soviet] and Trotsky. They escaped to Finland where they lodged with the Head of the Police, who was a Bolshevik, but the following month Zinoviev returned to Petrograd. Between July 26th and August 3rd the Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Party was held. Lenin was elected to the Central Committee by 133 votes, Zinoviev with just one vote less, and Trotsky (then in prison) with 131 votes.[1] Zinoviev was, with Kamenev (Trotsky's brother-in-law), publicly opposed to an insurrection against the Provisional Government (making him an enemy of Trotsky), forcing Lenin to propose that they be removed not only from the Central Committee but from the Party itself.
Following the Bolshevik October Revolution the Party proceeded to nationalise everything and imposed strict controls over the press. The motions for this were approved by 34 votes to twenty four. Five members of the Central Committee, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Nogin, Rykov and Milyutin resigned. The following year, however, Lenin appointed Zinoviev as Secretary of the new Third International. Angelica Balabanov expressed her horror that Lenin had put this "master of intrigue and calumny, to whom the end justifies the means, in charge of an organisation that was to cleanse and solidify the revolutionary forces of the world." Lenin responded: "He is an interpreter and executor of the will of others, and his personal shrewdness, ambiguity and dishonesty made it possible for him to discharge these duties more effectively than could a more scrupulous man."[2]
World War One was continuing and the arguments to continue or otherwise were raging. The Party's Central Committee met twice on February 18th to decide what should be done. Lenin and Zinoviev spoke in favour of peace. They were defeated by seven votes to six. That evening the Committee met again and this time Trotsky changed sides and the proposal for peace was carried by seven votes to six. On August 30th Fanny Kaplan attempted to assassinate Lenin firing two bullets into him. Zinoviev was quick off the mark and published a long eulogistic statement about their wounded leader of 200,000 copies.[3]
Zinoviev served as chairman of the Communist International (Comintern) from 1919 to 1926. He was one of the inspirations for the founding of the Anti-Fascist Action organisations.
- We have to win over 90 to 100 million of Russians for our cause; for the rest we have nothing to say, they must be annihilated. ~ Zinoviev, Petrograd, 1918.
Zinoviev, along with Karl Radek and Leon Trotsky, were the early political editors of The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia.[4]
Zinoviev married Z. I. Lilina, who despite being a notorious militant atheist and opponent of the Russian Orthodox Church, was, in 1929, buried at the entrance to the famous Svyato-Troitskaya Church in St.Petersburg.[5]
The End
In 1933 Stalin's 'order of the anti-Fascist battle' was being drawn up. One of those who had fallen from grace was Zinoviev. At Clara Zetkin's funeral Zinoviev told Willi Munzenberg that he was in disgrace, forced to live outside Moscow, and that in the town to which Stalin had banished him he was having difficulty finding enough to eat. Zinoviev was only then at the beginning of his fall from the Bolshevik Olympus. Following Kirov's murder the 'Terror' had their first big targets: Kamenev and Zinoviev, who were arrested immediately, but their show trials were not held for a full year and a half in the House of Unions in Moscow in August 1936. The trials were a great success and the two men "read their lines perfectly". Their confessions, quite without parallel in the literature of abjection, formed the basis for new purges, imprisonments, and executions. They had been promised their lives for co-operation. That was not to be.[6]
A victim of the evil system he was instrumental in creating, he was immediately removed to the Lubyanka prison. Thinking he would at least live, Zinoviev suddenly realised the truth when the soldiers stepped into his cell. He flung himself on the floor, made some desperate plea in his high-pitched Jewish voice, and gave the impression of hysteria. This induced one of the NKVD men to pull his revolver, force Zinoviev into an adjacent cell, and shoot him through the head. Hearing of this scene greatly impressed Stalin. He gave Zinoviev's executioner a medal.[7]
Sources
- ↑ Clark, Ronald W., Lenin: The Man Behind the Mask, Faber & Faber, London, 1988, pps:113, 134, 171-2, 176, 241-5.
- ↑ Clark, 1988, p.312-3.
- ↑ Clark, 1988, p.337, 372.
- ↑ Schlogel, Karl, The Soviet Century, Princeton University Press, Oxford, U.K., 2023, p.206, ISBN: 978-0-691-18374-9
- ↑ Schlogel, 2023, p.517.
- ↑ Koch, Stephen, Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Munzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals, Harper Collins pubs., London, 1995, pps:99, 137, 138-9, 814. ISBN: 0-00-255516-6.
- ↑ Koch, 1995, p.138-9.
