Åsmund Egge. Grigory Zinoviev: Lenin’s Right-hand Man. Routledge Histories of Central and Eastern Europe. London and New York: Routledge of Taylor & Francis, 2026. Pp. xi, 368.
Reviewed by Clayton Black
At roughly ten years of age (no precise dates are available), Ovsei-Gershen Aronovich Radomyshelsky, who later identified himself as Ovsei Radomyslsky, Grigory Radomyslsky, a variety of noms de plume, and eventually Grigory Zinoviev, reportedly pushed a friend into ‘a pit for leaching unslaked lime’ (p. 12). The burns to Ovsei-Gershen’s friend eventually killed him, an incident that Åsmund Egge (and his source, Vyacheslav Samokhodkin) speculates so traumatised the young Zinoviev that it may have caused him to attempt suicide. The tragedy may also explain the oft-documented emotional outbursts and fits of panic once Zinoviev rose to the pinnacle of power in the Bolshevik revolution.
Zinoviev’s childhood tragedy may or may not have left lifelong scars on his personality and behaviour. Egge stops short of a thoroughgoing psychological analysis. He must nevertheless confront an array of well-established characterisations of Zinoviev that dominate the published record. Indeed, nearly every attempt to reckon with Zinoviev—including my own—spills much ink recounting the man’s physical attributes (pudgy, wild hair, pale, high “tenor” voice, weak constitution), personal failings (moodiness, vainglory, womanising), theoretical shallowness, and infamous moments of indecision or cowardice in the revolution and first years of Soviet power. Zinoviev presents such an unappealing figure to most historians that few have ventured beyond superficial mentions of him. One colleague of mine who works on related subjects once repeatedly used the word “odious” to describe him. Such appraisals may help explain why, until recently, no full-length biography of the man had been written, and articles and dissertations that focus on him sound almost apologetic in their introductions. Yet not until his conclusion does Egge pose four critical questions:
How could such a deeply unsympathetic and inept person manage to build up a significant following – the so-called Zinovievists? How could a person “with no understanding of political power and no ability to treat people”, to quote E. H. Carr . . . manage to build such a unified and powerful organisation as the one Zinoviev established in Leningrad? How is it possible that Zinoviev was considered by many to be Lenin’s successor if he was so inept and unpleasant in every way? And how could the other leaders of the party accept that such mediocrity could occupy the most senior positions in the party? (p. 342)
Egge’s subtitle hints unintentionally at one possible answer to these questions, one that reflects the sentiment of Victor Serge, who called Zinoviev ‘Lenin’s biggest mistake’.[1] Though ‘right-hand man’ (depending on the reader’s view of Lenin) might suggest a favourable orientation to its subject, it may also imply what the historiography has tended to assume: Lenin placed his trust in Zinoviev, a trust that was ill-deserved and that Zinoviev was unable to parlay into successful leadership after the leader’s death in 1924. It is thus not difficult to understand historians’ reluctance to study the man: they see him merely as a mouthpiece for Lenin with few original ideas or contributions to the revolution; he was not as sympathetic as Nikolai Bukharin and offered no clearly articulated ‘alternative’ to what Joseph Stalin was creating; and, while Leon Trotsky may have identified Stalin also as a ‘mediocrity’ in the Party, neither Stalin nor his subsequent career require explanation for the attention they receive from historians.
Egge’s book is not an apology for Zinoviev. It is, rather, an attempt to offer a dispassionate account of a man who, for too long, received far less attention than his record at the apex of Bolshevik power would seem to warrant. Yuri Zhukov’s 2021 monograph, though it was the first full-length biography, used Zinoviev’s story as a part of a larger argument celebrating the Stalinist rejection of world revolution.[2] Recent dissertations by V.M. Vikhrov, V.N. Samokhodkin, A.Yu. Stefanenko, and Y.Yu. Sinin present scholarly treatments of specific periods or aspects of Zinoviev’s life and suggest that the time for a thoroughgoing re-evaluation of Zinoviev has arrived.[3] But, until now, English-language audiences have been limited to scarce academic articles on narrow topics. Egge has therefore rendered a distinct service to students of the Russian revolution and the early years of Soviet power.
Relatively little is known of Zinoviev’s early life. He was born in 1883 to the family of a prosperous Jewish dairy farmer not far from Yelizavetgrad – later named Zinovievsk and then renamed Kirovsk for the man whose assassination in 1934 he was accused of abetting – in the Pale of Settlement in modern Ukraine. He was home schooled but, despite exposure to religious study (as evidenced by frequent biblical allusions in his speeches and writings), he gravitated to political radicalism. Like Trotsky, whose hometown was not far, he was drawn more to the internationalism of European Social Democracy than to Zionism or the Jewish Bund. After participating in study circles and strike organisations in the 1890s, young Radomyslsky joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party in 1901. When his activities brought him to the attention of police, he left the country, eventually ending up in Switzerland, a haven for Russian political exiles. In Bern he enrolled in the university as a student of chemistry and soon met Zinaida (Zlata) Lilina, who became his first wife (and herself a prominent member of the RSDLP). Politics attracted him more than his studies, however, and it was not long before he met Vladimir Lenin, with whom he quickly established a steady working relationship.
When the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks split at the second RSDLP congress in 1903, Zinoviev (who was not present at the congress) sided with Lenin. Together with Zlata, he joined the supporters of Lenin’s newspaper, Vperëd (“Forward”) in early 1905. From this point on Zinoviev became, according to Egge, Lenin’s ‘right-hand man’. Egge has reconstructed Zinoviev’s pre-revolutionary years from a wide array of sources, recounting Zinoviev’s friendship and collaboration with Lenin and Krupskaya during their time abroad, his participation in RSDLP congresses (beginning with the Fifth in 1907 in London at the age of 23), and his rise to prominence among the Bolshevik leadership in St. Petersburg, focusing much of his attention on work with the trade unions. He quickly distinguished himself as an effective agitator, despite (or perhaps because of) his unusually high voice, which some described as ‘feminine’. Even Trotsky, whose negative appraisals of Zinoviev have left a lasting imprint on the historiography, credited him with drawing the participants of the London congress back to the hall, at a moment when all were in the process of leaving, by making a speech that earned him a spot on the Central Committee (p. 20).
Egge’s compilation of the facts of Zinoviev’s whereabouts and contributions in the period before 1917 are a much-needed addition to the literature. But, aside from the claim that Lenin and Zinoviev worked closely with one another in exile, what do we know of Zinoviev’s development as a revolutionary thinker? On this point, Egge struggles to gainsay the consensus that Zinoviev was little more than a mouthpiece for Lenin’s ideas. Students at the party school in Longjumeau, France, reportedly called him Lenin’s ‘errand boy’, the Mensheviks referred to him as ‘Lenin’s lapdog’, and even party leaders said that Zinoviev ‘followed Lenin as the thread follows the needle’ (p. 41). David Riazanov offered a contrasting view, praising Zinoviev as, aside from Lenin, ‘the party’s most learned man’, especially well versed in economics and sociology. But that report comes via Anatolii Lunacharsky, whose portrait of Zinoviev was written at the height of the latter’s power in the early 1920s. Egge does note instances of disagreement with Lenin, but these appear more as questions of degree rather than of principle.
A close analysis of Zinoviev’s voluminous writings in exile would seem to be the logical way to explain the man’s intellectual evolution. Yet, for all his laudable skill at locating the details of Zinoviev’s life, Egge stops short of such a step. He does make extensive use of Zinoviev’s History of the Bolshevik Party, published in 1923, and refers to excerpts of Zinoviev’s reminiscences published in 1989. But, though the majority of volumes of his works that were published are filled with articles written for a wide array of newspapers, Egge devotes little or no space to them. Zinoviev was extraordinarily prolific, reputed to have published in as many as 150 different venues. A detailed comparison of Lenin and Zinoviev’s writings to identify differences of viewpoint would be a gargantuan task, and Egge was surely eager to complete his project. Nevertheless, Zinoviev’s claim that, between 1907 and 1917, ‘all of Vladimir Ilyich’s most important manuscripts passed through our hands until we came to an agreement’ (p. 39), raises the possibility that the influence may have been to some degree mutually reinforcing. As important, Zinoviev’s output reflects his own involvement in the political debates of the pre-1917 era. This was of enormous consequence to his later political behaviour. His outbursts and accusations against his foes in the 1920s read as though he was still struggling against the perceived Social-Democratic heresies of the pre-revolutionary years, which confused many less seasoned comrades and alienated him from many others.
As concerns 1917, Egge has carefully culled the existing literature and published primary sources to offer a subtle reading of Zinoviev’s actions and decisions. Whereas Trotsky and others characterised Zinoviev as cowardly at moments such as those connected with the June demonstrations and the July Days, his infamous ‘betrayal’ in October with Lev Kamenev, and his effort to negotiate with for a coalition of socialist parties, Egge suggests that he was, in fact, consistent throughout the year, supporting the seizure of power by the soviets, the expropriation of land from landlords, and opposing the war and the Provisional Government along with the parties that supported them. He did waver in deciding whether to support the June demonstrations, concerned that they would provide the Provisional Government with a pretext for a crackdown—a back-and-forth that damaged his reputation with the rank-and-file in Petrograd.
From that point forward, however, Egge argues that Zinoviev held steadily to a moderate line among the Bolsheviks, and his actions should hardly be interpreted as cowardly. As one of Lenin’s closest associates, he was an obvious target for arrest after the July Days. The decision to hide in Finland came at the urging of party members who feared that they might face execution if they stayed and were arrested as alleged German spies. Yet Zinoviev returned to Petrograd sooner than Lenin, travelling to speak at meetings across the city. It was Lenin, rather than Zinoviev, who shifted his position on the soviets. Having turned against the soviets in the summer for their moderation and cooperation with the Provisional Government, Lenin grew insistent on a seizure of power in the name of the soviets when the radicalism of the soviets grew in September and October, even if it meant rule by a single party. Zinoviev, Kamenev, and others were not convinced that the Bolsheviks were strong enough to withstand counterrevolutionary forces or that a Bolshevik revolution would enjoy the support of the international proletariat. They preferred the Party to take its chances with the Constituent Assembly, arguing that although the Bolsheviks would most likely end up in a minority, the resulting government would be both legitimate and could be dominated by a Bolshevik-Left SR bloc as leftist platforms gained in popularity.
The story of their ‘strikebreaking’ before the October Revolution—publishing their dissent in advance of the uprising and thereby revealing Bolshevik intentions—is well known. But it is worth considering, as Egge does, that although the dissenters may have appeared weak-kneed at that decisive moment, their reasoning may have been more sober than that of the majority in the Central Committee. Moreover, Zinoviev showed determination in defying Lenin’s authority (and friendship) by sticking to his position (pp. 77-80). Despite Lenin’s blistering criticisms and calls for expulsion from the Party, he and Kamenev continued to negotiate with Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks for a socialist coalition government and, together with three other members, they resigned their positions in the Central Committee. They only recanted their decisions to resign when it was clear that the dissidents had no support from the newly selected Central Committee, their negotiations had proved fruitless, and lower-ranking party members urged them to reverse their decisions in the name of party unity (p. 79).
Egge appears to have conducted the bulk of his research in Moscow, so the chapters that cover Zinoviev’s leadership of Petrograd between 1918 and 1926 rely heavily on secondary literature and published documents. Nevertheless, he offers a solid account of Zinoviev’s time as ‘tsar’ (as he puts it) of the northern capital. Here, again, Egge balances much of the prevailing wisdom with a careful assessment of the actual political, economic, and social conditions in the city and surrounding territory. While he does take into account reports of Zinoviev indulging a taste for luxury amid the squalor and suffering of the civil war era—enjoying the use of several automobiles; moving first into the Astoria hotel and then into a large apartment; gaining weight even as most residents were tightening their belts—he is also clear about the enormous responsibilities Zinoviev assumed: chair of the presidium and executive committee of the Petrograd soviet; chair of the council of commissars of the Petrograd Labour Commune and the Northern Oblast; membership in the party’s Central Committee; and, eventually, chair of the Third International.
Was Zinoviev an effective administrator? Egge’s assessment is mixed. He notes a tendency to mercurial temper, such as that which accompanied the calls for Red Terror against the new regime’s foes. Despite a relatively moderate attitude toward political opposition in mid-1918 (which earned him a harsh rebuke from Lenin), the assassination of the head of Petrograd’s political police (Cheka), Moisei Uritsky, prompted a sharp about-face. His sudden zeal for bloodshed embarrassed some of his close colleagues, a shift that some commentors attributed to cowardice and panic. Egge remains uncommitted, noting Samokhodkin’s diagnosis of ‘neurasthenia’ resulting from the childhood trauma as well as the possibility of shock following an alleged assassination attempt (p. 107).
At the same time, Zinoviev played a crucial role in advocating for Petrograd. He opposed the relocation of the capital to Moscow in 1918; and, although he lost that battle, he nevertheless consistently fought to support the interests of workers and industry in the northwest, both of which had been devastated by years of war and revolution. Indeed, Zinoviev deliberately promoted the image of Petrograd as the cradle of the revolution and its workers and sailors as the vanguard of the entire Soviet working population. He was quick to use Lenin’s death in January 1924, to add lustre to the city by having it renamed Leningrad. He was jealous of his authority, yet he surrounded himself with capable lieutenants who ran the city more or less effectively during his many trips to Moscow, where he maintained an apartment in the Kremlin. Those trips increased as Zinoviev was drawn into political struggles after Lenin was gone. But, despite harsh judgments, such as that of Robert V. Daniels, that the Leningrad party organisation only backed Zinoviev in opposition in 1925, because he was ‘the undisputed boss in his own territory’, it is worth noting that many of the city’s party leaders and rank-and-file members maintained their loyalty to him into the late 1920s, well after it was clear that his defeat was complete.[4]
Egge covers familiar terrain in recounting Zinoviev’s alliance with Stalin and Kamenev against Trotsky, followed by his turn against Stalin as his misgivings grew over the latter’s exercise of power and his intentions. Egge does, however, add to the existing literature by taking seriously Zinoviev’s views on the New Economic Policy (NEP) rather than portraying his positions solely as ‘power struggle’ politics. Whereas historians such as Daniels, Isaac Deutscher, and Robert C. Tucker emphasised Stalin’s theory of ‘socialism in one country’ primarily as a weapon in the battle against Trotsky, Egge elevates Zinoviev’s role in that debate.[5] Zinoviev was a longtime champion of world revolution as a foundational principle of Marxism and essential for Russia to overcome its backwardness by building socialism with the aid of more industrially developed countries to the west. The final failure of revolution in Germany in 1923 was deeply disappointing to the entire party; and it was a particular embarrassment to Zinoviev, who had staked much of his reputation on overly aggressive Comintern tactics there. But he continued to believe that world revolution was inevitable and necessary. A state policy that denied that necessity was un-Marxist and, when based on an economic policy that encouraged the enrichment of well-to-do peasants, it risked pushing Russia back towards capitalism. Egge’s approach broadens the context of the socialism-in-one-country debate and, thus, helps us understand more clearly Zinoviev and Kamenev’s opposition in late 1925, as well as their rapprochement with Trotsky in 1926. They could not agree with Trotsky on the theory of permanent revolution, but they did all see NEP as temporary or, as Zinoviev insisted, a ‘detour’, while Stalin and Bukharin were presenting it as the path to socialism.
This framing also makes it easier to understand how Zinoviev could eventually retract his opposition once Stalin abandoned NEP in his assault on Bukharin, the Right Opposition, and pro-peasant policies generally. Egge does not deny the opportunism implicit in Zinoviev’s bowing before Stalin, but he does not characterise it as an act of cowardice. He shows that Zinoviev believed he could maintain a position of loyal opposition and, indeed, continued to correspond with former oppositionists for years. The violence of collectivisation exceeded anything that Trotsky, Zinoviev, or Kamenev would have endorsed, but at least the problem was now the specific policies of the person in charge rather than the Party’s overall policy direction.
Egge’s first book, a study of the murder of Sergei Kirov (the event that ultimately led to Zinoviev’s trial and execution), provided much of the source material for his final chapters.[6] This is easily the strongest section of the biography. He has carefully sifted through Zinoviev’s collection in the Central Party Archive (RGASPI) and has uncovered detailed private correspondence and unpublished manuscripts that substantially expand what we know about the man’s final years. In his confinement, Zinoviev wrote a lengthy semi-autobiography entitled, ‘A Justified Sentence’ (Zasluzhennyi prigovor), in which he recounted his numerous sins and made a show of accepting the Party’s condemnation of him. Egge uses this source judiciously, given the circumstances under which it was written, but also fruitfully to fill many gaps in the story of his period as a pariah. From exile with Kamenev to Kaluga, back to Moscow, to Kazan, to imprisonment, Egge relates Zinoviev’s repeated attempts to return to political life, each time with greater desperation.
Egge admits that we do not know the details of how Zinoviev met his death shortly after his trial in August 1936. He retells the well-known story of him grovelling and begging for his life, but, as he does consistently throughout the book, he points out the reasons for scepticism with the available accounts. Considering the many-sided image of Zinoviev that emerges in these pages, nearly any possibility is open. But Egge seems most persuaded that Zinoviev understood very well what awaited him and met his fate simply with resignation.
This book is thorough and well researched. It has long been needed in the historiography of the Bolshevik revolution. Most of the details herein have been available for a long time, but, as the dissertations mentioned and a 2023 conference in St. Petersburg dedicated to Zinoviev suggest, interest in the man and his life has never been greater, and we owe Egge a debt of gratitude for providing what will surely be a standard account for some time.
Yet the biography raises perhaps as many questions as it answers. What, after all, do we want to know about Grigory Zinoviev? Returning to Egge’s subtitle, we can accept that, at least in the years of exile abroad and up to the February revolution, Zinoviev had probably the closest working relationship with Lenin of any Bolshevik. It is not clear from Egge’s narrative, however, that he continued to be ‘Lenin’s right-hand man’ after their exile together in Finland. So, in what sense should we think of him as such? He was an effective agitator for Lenin’s positions at key moments, such as making the case for the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and the trade-union debate before the Tenth Party Congress. But did Lenin continue to rely on him as a sounding board for theoretical questions? Was Zinoviev an insightful interpreter of Lenin’s arguments? Does he deserve a re-evaluation as a Marxist theoretician in his own right? Egge does not venture a straightforward opinion on this point. Zinoviev wrote compulsively, yet much work remains for historians interested in giving his writings the attention they may actually deserve.
What of Zinoviev’s reputation for instability, inconsistency, and cowardice? While Egge addresses the many weaknesses of the man’s character, readers hoping either for a full-throated rehabilitation or a thorough condemnation may be frustrated. But why is character more important in discussing Zinoviev than the other Bolshevik leaders? Perhaps it is because his downfall seems so dependent on his flaws. For Bolshevism’s foes, he conforms so easily to the archetype of a dogmatic yet craven villain that would-be rehabilitators find evidence of his shortcomings difficult to overcome. Unlike Nikolai Bukharin, Mikhail Tomsky, or Alexander Shlyapnikov, for example, whose biographers can portray their central figures—occasional circumstances notwithstanding—as basically sympathetic, Zinoviev seems to have had few likable qualities.[7] Zinoviev is also unlike Stalin or Nikolai Yezhov, whose biographers have little need or desire to rehabilitate their subjects, searching instead to explain their subjects’ particular evils.[8] Yet friends and foes of Lenin alike acknowledge his talent—so what did he see in Zinoviev that others have missed? Though Egge has commendably avoided clownish stereotypes, he has not brought us substantially closer to answering that question. To be fair, the question may, in the end, be unanswerable. Who can say what peculiar chemistry draws one person to another for collaboration and companionship? But, if we are to accept that Zinoviev was Lenin’s ‘right-hand man’, a more sustained assessment of their intellectual relationship is worth pursuing.
Beyond questions of Zinoviev as a theorist, our picture of him as a practical leader could also use further elaboration. The in-fighting among the Central Committee members after Lenin’s death naturally draws our attention, but it is important to remember that Zinoviev held on to his responsibilities in what was, arguably, the most important industrial centre of the country until early 1926, even as he found himself drawn with greater frequency to Moscow. The late Alexander Rabinowitch has left us with a detailed analysis of the beginning of Zinoviev’s reign as ‘tsar’.[9] But St. Petersburg archives have much to tell us about the Zinoviev era there that historians such as myself have barely begun to examine.
These comments should be understood as encouragement for further study rather than criticisms. Egge’s monograph advances our understanding of a key figure of the Bolshevik revolution well beyond the caricatures that have too long dominated the historiography. It also makes clear that much work remains.
[1] Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, trans. Peter Sedgwick and George Paizis (New York: NYRB, 2012), p. 207.
[2] See the review by Yevgeny Sinin of Yu. N. Zhukov, Grigorii Zinov’ev: Otvergnutyi vozhd’ mirovoi revoliutsii; politicheskaia biografiia (Moscow: Kontseptual, 2021) in Vestnik MGPU “Istoricheskaia nauka” 49 (No. 1, 2023), pp. 152-64.
[3] Viacheslav Mikhailovich Vikhrov, Kommunisticheskii lider G.E. Zinov’ev vo glave Petrograda-Leningrada (konets 1917 g.–nachalo 1926 g.), dissertation, Herzen Pedagogical University, 2011; Viacheslav Nikolaevich Samokhodkin, Politicheskaia i gosudarstvennaia deiatel’nost’ G.E. Zinov’eva v khode velikoi Rossiiskoi Revoliutsii: 1917–mart 1918 gg., dissertation, St. Petersburg State University, 2017; Aleksandr Iur’evich Stefanenko, Vnutripartiinaia bor’ba v Leningrade, 1926–1933 gg., dissertation, St. Petersburg Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences, 2021; Evgenii Iur’evich Sinin, Vzgliady G.E. Zinov’eva na partiinoe i gosudarstvennoe stroitel’stvo v usloviiakh politicheskoi bor’by: 1906–1936 gg., dissertation, Moscow City Pedagogical University, 2025.
[4] Robert V. Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia, Russian Research Center Studies 40 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 271.
[5] Daniels, Conscience of the Revolution; Isaac Deutscher, Stalin: A Political Biography, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949); Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary 1879–1929: A Study in History and Personality (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973).
[6] Åsmund Egge, The Kirov Enigma: The Murder that Unleashed Stalin’s Terror (e-book, 2011; Norwegian edition, Kirov-gåten: Mordet som utløste Stalins terror, Oslo: Unipub, 2009).
[7] Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1980); Charters Wynn, The Moderate Bolshevik: Mikhail Tomsky from the Factory to the Kremlin, 1880-1936, Historical Materialism Book Series (Chicago: Haymarket, 2023); Barbara C. Allen, Alexander Shlyapnikov, 1885–1937: Life of an Old Bolshevik, Historical Materialism Book Series (Chicago: Haymarket, 2016).
[8] On Yezhov, see J. Arch Getty and Oleg Naumov, Yezhov: The Rise of Stalin’s “Iron Fist” (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).
[9] Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks in Power: The First Year of Soviet Rule in Petrograd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008); and The Bolsheviks Survive: Petrograd, 1919, Russian and East European Studies (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2026).
