page_title: Grigory Zinoviev
section_title: With Stalin and Kamenev against Trotsky (1923–24)
hierarchical_section_title: Grigory Zinoviev / Biography / With Stalin and Kamenev against Trotsky (1923–24)
caption_attribution_description: English: On the photo:Kliment Voroshilov first on the right, Grigory Zinoviev third from the right, Avel Enukidze fourth from the right and Nikolay Antipov fifth from the right. The meeting is dedicated to the red banner from the Paris Commune, brought to Moscow by French communists.
context_page_description: Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev, born Hirsch Apfelbaum, known also under the name Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician. Zinoviev was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution: Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov. Zinoviev is best remembered as the longtime head of the Communist International and the architect of several failed attempts to transform Germany into a communist country during the early 1920s. He was in competition against Joseph Stalin, who eliminated him from the Soviet political leadership in 1925, followed by removal from the Petrograd Soviet in 1926. He joined a secret bloc with Leon Trotsky against Stalin in 1932.
  He was a chief defendant in a 1936 show trial, the Trial of the Sixteen, that marked the start of the Great Purge in the USSR and resulted in his execution the day after his conviction in August 1936.
  Zinoviev was also the alleged author of the Zinoviev letter to British communists, urging revolution, and published just before the 1924 general election. The message is widely dismissed as a forgery.
context_section_description: During Lenin's final illness, Zinoviev, his close associate Kamenev and Joseph Stalin formed a ruling 'triumvirate' (or 'troika') in the Communist Party, playing a key role in the 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 General Secretary of the Central Committee at the XIIIth Party Congress in May–June 1924 during the first Lenin's Testament controversy.
  
  After a brief lull in the summer of 1924, Trotsky published Lessons of October, an extensive summary of the events of 1917. In the article, Trotsky described Zinoviev's and Kamenev's opposition to the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, something that the two would have preferred left unmentioned. This started a new round of intra-party struggle, with Zinoviev and Kamenev once again allied with Stalin against Trotsky. They and their supporters accused Trotsky of various mistakes and worse during the Russian Civil War. They damaged his military reputation so much that he was forced to resign as 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.
caption: Kliment Voroshilov (first on the right), Grigory Zinoviev (third from the right), Avel Enukidze (fourth from the right) and Nikolai Antipov (fifth from the right), June 1924
exif: {"Image Tag 0x000B": "Windows Photo Editor 10.0.10011.16384", "Image ImageWidth": "2110", "Image ImageLength": "1591", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D5100", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC 2017 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2018:04:15 15:33:22", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Padding": "[]", "Image ExifOffset": "2436", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 3, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "5216", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "5330", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8288", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/100", "EXIF FNumber": "5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Unidentified", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2018:02:23 14:34:40", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2018:02:23 14:34:40", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "415241/62500", "EXIF ApertureValue": "290241/62500", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "18/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "18", "EXIF SubSecTime": "70", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "70", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "70", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2110", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1591", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "5196", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "27", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "4166"}