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Grigori (Ovsei Gershon Aronor Zinoviev)

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"GRIGORI [OVSEI GERSHON ARONOR] ZINOVIEV (1883-), Russian revolutionary politician, was born at Novomirgorod in 1883. He was of Jewish origin and his original name was Aronor, but he was known in early life under the names of Apfelbaum or Radomyslovsky and later adopted several designations, such as Shatski, Grigoriev, Grigori and Zinoviev, by the two last of which he is most frequently called. For many years he was an active member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour party, and attended the London Conference in 1907. The next year he was arrested on a charge of participating in the work of the printing press Rabotnik, sentenced to a term of solitary confinement in St. Petersburg and forbidden to reside there in future. He then made his way abroad, and in 1909 was editing the Social Democrat, the party's main organ. He was present at the party meeting of Nov. 1915, when a split occurred amongst the Russian Social Democratic members of the Duma, and earlier in that year had attended the Zimmerwald meeting at Berne, consisting mainly of Lenin's group, where arrangements were made to get copies of the Social Democrat secretly into Russia and to keep in close touch with Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in Germany so as to ensure the distribution of Lenin's literature to Russian prisoners of war.

After the Revolution Zinoviev returned to Russia and became a prominent member of the Petrograd Soviet, of which he became president after the murder of Uritsky in 1918. In the summer of 1917 the paper Den published revelations showing that he had been formerly employed by the department of police, and this statement was not refuted.

Zinoviev became a member of the Petrograd Committee and of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist party, and was first president of the Third (Communist) International. He was also president of the Petrograd Extraordinary Commission for combating counter-revolution, speculation and sabotage, and he occupied the position of president of the Soviet. Government in Petrograd.