Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev

At the Fifth Party Congress in London in 1907 Zinoviev was elected a candidate (voting) member of the RSDLP Central Committee with 143 votes and was named to the parallel factional leadership, the 'Bolshevik Center'. Arrested in March 1908 and then released, he was called to Geneva by Lenin in August 1908 and moved to Paris with Kamenev. From then until the Revolution of 1917 he remained 'Lenin's constant aide-de-camp and confidante'.

His party identity in these years was built on emigre editorial and organisational work. In Paris he worked as editor of the Bolshevik factional organ Proletarii, and it was then that the pseudonym 'Zinoviev', wordplay on his wife Zlata Lilina's party name 'Zina', became his main signature. In Switzerland in 1915 he co-wrote with Lenin the pamphlet 'Socialism and War: The Attitude of the RSDLP Towards the War', in which Lenin wrote chapter 1 and parts of 3–4 while Zinoviev wrote all of chapter 2 and parts of 3–4. He also worked on Sotsial-Demokrat, the organ printed in Geneva from November 1914.

Internationalist work belonged to this phase as well. At the anti-war Zimmerwald Conference in early September 1915 Zinoviev was the chief spokesman for the revolutionary socialist 'Zimmerwald Left' and summarised the conference for the Bolshevik press. Afterwards the Zimmerwald Left continued as a loose entity with Lenin, Zinoviev and Karl Radek as a three-person directing body in Bern.

The return of 1917 and the July Days form a phase of their own. Zinoviev travelled with Lenin, Krupskaya and Lilina on the 'sealed train' and arrived in Petrograd on 16 April (n.s.) 1917 as Lenin's 'trusted right-hand man'. During the July Days of 1917, with Lenin briefly away, he played an oversized role steering the party's response, and it was he who delivered the impromptu speech that dispersed the crowd outside the Tauride Palace.

That phase has to be told together with the October dispute. At the closed meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee on 10 (23) October 1917 Zinoviev and Kamenev voted against Lenin's resolution on armed insurrection as premature, and their open airing of the opposition effectively exposed the Bolsheviks' and Left SRs' intentions to the government. Lenin called their conduct traitorous, but the leadership limited itself to barring them from speaking in the name of the Central Committee rather than expelling them. On 18 (31) October Kamenev published a statement in Gorky's non-party Novaya Zhizn signing for himself and for Zinoviev; Zinoviev declared he had not authorised this, and Lenin demanded the expulsion of both as 'strikebreakers', while the Central Committee on 20 October (2 November) declined to act against them for airing confidential party matters in a non-party publication.

Siding with Lenin on the Brest-Litovsk peace on 8 March 1918 restored him to Lenin's favour and to the Central Committee; on 25 March 1919 he joined the new Politburo as a non-voting member, and from March 1919 he was named chairman of the Comintern's Executive Committee. A post-October thread runs on from the same phase: ten days after the Bolsheviks took power Zinoviev, along with Rykov, Milyutin and Nogin, resigned his Central Committee place over the decision to exclude the Left SRs from the government, and after Lenin's ultimatum only Zinoviev renounced the decision and resumed his seat, effectively ending his revolt. Lenin later recalled this 'October episode' in his testament.

After Lenin's death in 1924, Zinoviev formed the 'triumvirate' with Kamenev and Stalin to isolate Trotsky. Zinoviev played a leading role in the 1924 'Literary Discussion,' attacking Trotsky's 'Lessons of October.' He stood with those demanding Trotsky's expulsion from the party.

But victory was short-lived. Once Trotsky was neutralised, Stalin pivoted, allying with Bukharin and Rykov. At the XIV Party Congress in December 1925, Zinoviev, backed by the Leningrad delegation, raised the banner of the 'New Opposition,' demanding inner-party democracy. He was crushed. The following February, in a desperate bid to save his political life, he reached out to his lifelong enemy. Zinoviev and Trotsky exchanged friendly letters, and by summer the 'United Opposition' was formed.

Zinoviev was swiftly removed as chairman of the Leningrad Soviet and head of the Comintern, then expelled from the Politburo in July 1926. In October 1927 he was ejected from the Central Committee; on November 14 he was expelled from the party; on November 28 he was banished from the Society of Old Bolsheviks. Alongside Trotsky, he was now being crushed by the very machine he had helped build.

In early 1928 Zinoviev was exiled to Kaluga. By year's end he capitulated (a public letter to Stalin confessing his 'anti-party errors') and was readmitted to the party. The defeat of the United Opposition was the final gateway to Stalin's one-man dictatorship. Zinoviev's betrayal and humiliation were merely the prologue to the fate awaiting him eight years later.

In August 1936, sixteen defendants stood in Moscow's Trade Union House. The biggest name was Grigory Zinoviev (Lenin's closest comrade, first chairman of the Comintern, once the face of the Soviet system) now charged as the ringleader of a 'Trotskyite-Zinovievite terrorist centre.'

Prosecutor Vyshinsky pinned the Kirov assassination on Zinoviev's alleged orders. Zinoviev already knew that personal loyalty alone would not save him. Neither letters to Stalin with Kamenev, nor confessions, nor swearing fealty to the party made any difference. What he symbolised was the problem: the Old Bolshevik, Lenin's era, every hesitation of October 1917.

By day two, every defendant had confessed 'guilt' and accepted the demand for the death penalty. In his final statement, Zinoviev declared: 'I curse my fascist, anti-Soviet activity… For the crime of betraying the socialist motherland, I deserve to be shot.'

Within days, all sixteen were executed. The chairman of the Comintern no longer existed.