Zinoviev Letter

The "Zinoviev Letter" was a controversial document published by the British press four days before thegeneral election in 1924. It purported to be a directive from the Communist International in Moscow to the Communist Party of Great Britain. The letter took its name from the apparent signature of a senior Soviet official Grigory Zinoviev. The letter seemed authentic at the time but historians now believe it was a forgery. It called for intensified communist agitation in Britain. Historians now agree that the letter had little impact on the Labourvote—which held up in 1924. However, it aided the Conservative Party in hastening the collapse of the Liberal party that led to the Conservative landslide.A.J.P. Taylor argues that the most important impact was on the psychology of Labourites, who for years blamed their defeat on foul play, thereby misunderstanding the political forces at work and postponing needed reforms in the Labour Party.

History

Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, head of the short-lived Labour government of 1924

Background

In 1924, the moderate socialist Labour Party formed a government for the first time. However, it was aminority government, and was liable to fall if theConservatives and Liberals combined against it. In foreign policy, the government recognized the Soviet Union in February 1924, and proposed to lend it money. On 8 October 1924, the Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald suffered defeat in the House of Commons on a motion of no confidence, forcing MacDonald to go to the King to seek a dissolution ofParliament and new elections. The immediate cause of the parliamentary defeat had been the government's decision to drop the prosecution of communist editor John Ross Campbell under theIncitement to Mutiny Act 1797 for publication of an open letter in Workers Weekly calling on soldiers to "let it be known that, neither in the class war nor in a military war, will you turn your guns on your fellow workers." New national elections were scheduled for 29 October.

The letter

Near the end of the short election campaign, there appeared in the press the text of a letter purporting to have originated from Grigory Zinoviev, head of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (Comintern) and Arthur MacManus, the British representative to ECCI, and addressed to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

One particularly damaging section of this letter read:

A settlement of relations between the two countries will assist in the revolutionizing of the international and British proletariat not less than a successful rising in any of the working districts of England, as the establishment of close contact between the British and Russian proletariat, the exchange of delegations and workers, etc. will make it possible for us to extend and develop the propaganda of ideas of Leninism in England and the Colonies.

Publication

The damning document was published in the conservative British Daily Mail newspaper four days before the election. The letter came at a sensitive time in relations between Britain and the Soviet Union, due to Conservative opposition to the parliamentary ratification of the Anglo-Soviet trade agreement of 8 August.

The publication of the letter was severely embarrassing to Prime Minister MacDonald and his Labour Party. Although his party faced long odds in the voting booth, MacDonald had not given up hope in the campaign. Any chance of an upset victory was dashed as the spectre of internal revolution and a government oblivious to the peril dominated the public consciousness. MacDonald's attempts to cast doubt as to the authenticity of the letter were in vain, hampered by the document's widespread acceptance among government officials. MacDonald told his Cabinet he "felt like a man sewn in a sack and thrown into the sea."

Grigory Zinoviev

Election result

The Conservative Party garnered a decisive victory in the October 1924 election. This ended the country's first Labour government. After the Conservatives formed a government with Stanley Baldwin as Prime Minister, a cabinet committee investigated the letter and concluded that it was genuine.^[7] The Conservative government did not undertake any further investigation despite continuing allegations that the letter was forged. On 21 November 1924 Britain's new Conservative government cancelled the unratified trade agreement with the Soviet Union.

Denial by Zinoviev

The Comintern and Soviet government vehemently and consistently denied the authenticity of the document. Grigorii Zinoviev issued a denial on 27 October 1924, which was finally published in the December 1924 issue of The Communist Review, the monthly theoretical magazine of the CPGB, well after the MacDonald government had fallen. Zinoviev declared:

The letter of 15th September, 1924, which has been attributed to me, is from the first to the last word, a forgery. Let us take the heading. The organisation of which I am the president never describes itself officially as the "Executive Committee of the Third Communist International"; the official name is "Executive Committee of the Communist International." Equally incorrect is the signature, "The Chairman of the Presidium." The forger has shown himself to be very stupid in his choice of the date. On the 15th of September, 1924, I was taking a holiday in Kislovodsk, and, therefore, could not have signed any official letter. [...]

It is not difficult to understand why some of the leaders of the Liberal-Conservative bloc had recourse to such methods as the forging of documents. Apparently they seriously thought they would be able, at the last minute before the elections, to create confusion in the ranks of those electors who sincerely sympathise with the Treaty between England and the Soviet Union. It is much more difficult to understand why the English Foreign Office, which is still under the control of the Prime Minister, MacDonald, did not refrain from making use of such a white-guardist forgery.

Impact

Historians now agree that the letter had little impact on the Labour vote—which held up. It aided the Conservative Party in hastening the collapse of the Liberal party, which led to the Conservative landslide. James says the Letter provided Labour "with a magnificent excuse for failure and defeat. The inadequacies that had been exposed in the Government in its brief existence could be ignored." Indeed, many Labourites for years blamed their defeat on the Letter, thereby, as Taylor notes, misunderstanding the political forces at work and postponing needed reforms in the Labour Party.

The result of the election was not disastrous to Labour. The Conservatives were returned decisively, gaining 155 seats for a total of 413 members of parliament. Labour lost 40 seats, but held on to 151. The Liberals lost 118 seats (leaving them with only 40) and their vote count fell by over a million. The real significance of the election was that the Liberals - whom Labour had displaced as the second largest political party in 1922 - were now clearly a minor party.

A 1967 British study deemed that the Labour Party was destined for defeat in October 1924 in any event, and argues that the primary effect of the purported Comintern communication was upon Anglo-Soviet relations:

Under Baldwin, the British Government led the diplomatic retreat from Moscow. Soviet Russia became more isolated, and, of necessity, more isolationist. [...]

The Zinoviev letter hardened attitudes, and hardened them at a time when the Soviet Union was becoming more amenable to diplomatic contact with the capitalist world. The proponents of world revolution were being superseded by more pliant subscribers to the Stalinist philosophy of "Building Socialism in One Country". Thus, after successfully weathering all the early contradictions in Soviet Diplomacy, Britain gave up when the going was about to become much easier. And it gave up largely because the two middle-class parties suddenly perceived that their short-term electoral advantage was best served by a violent anti-Bolshevik campaign.