ZINOVIEV, GRIGORY EVSEEVICH Russian politician, was born in Sept. 1883 at Elisavetgrad (Zin ovievsk). He studied chemistry and later law at Bern. He was a revolutionary before he was 20, and in 1903 met Lenin. He joined the Left or Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Demo cratic party, of which Lenin was head. He was head of the Bolshevik party in Bern and during 1903-4 started Bolshevik propaganda in South Russia. Apart from his activities abroad, he came into prominence in Russia during 1906-8 as a member of the Bolshevik St. Petersburg committee of the R.S.D.P., by his organization of the attempted Kronstadt rising after the dispersal of the first Duma, his editorship of the Bolshevik paper V pered (Forward), and of The Social Democrat, the central organ of the party. In 1908 he was arrested and imprisoned but was released, the authorities being unaware of his identity. He then went abroad and did not return until the revolution in 1917.
During these nine years Zinoviev worked hard for his party. He was a member of the central committee, co-editor of the prin cipal Bolshevik publications, an:1 representative of the party at the Copenhagen congress of the International. In 1912 he went with Lenin to Galicia to control from the nearest possible point the growing labour movement in Russia. In Galicia he founded the foreign bureau of the central committee, which guided the party work in Russia and the activities of the Bolshevik group in the Duma. During the World War the conflict between the
Bolshevik party and the Social Democrats increased. Zinoviev edited with Lenin Against the Tide, a work of propaganda against the World War; and at the Zimmerwald conference (1915) they began to organize the Communist International. On the outbreak of the March revolution (1917) they returned to Russia and be gan to prepare the way for the revolution. Zinoviev was co-editor of Pravda and, after its suppression, of The Proletarian and The Worker. He thus became one of the leading figures in Russia. In 1919 he was elected president of the Communist International, and after the death of Lenin in 1924 was one of the most zealous upholders of pure "Leninism." But in 1926 he was expelled from the political bureau, and in 1927 from the Communist party. He was re-admitted in 1929; but in January 1935 he and Kamenev (q.v.) were exiled for counter-revolutionary activities. On Aug. 25, 1936, convicted of high treason together with Kamenev and 14 others, he was shot. His alleged letter to English communists was a factor in the British general election of Oct.