ZIN′KOVSKII (ZADOV), LEV NIKOLAEVICH (11 April 1893–25 September 1938). Born at the Jewish settlement of Veselaia, in Ekaterinoslav guberniia, into the family of an unskilled laborer, but raised from the age of seven at Iuzovka, L. N. Zin′kovskii was to become one of the senior commanders of the Revolutionary-Insurgent Army of Ukraine of Nestor Makhno and later a servant of the Soviet secret police. He had only two years of schooling, before going to work at a metallurgical factory in the Donbass. There, he was attracted to anarchism and, in 1913, was sentenced to eight years of exile for an attack on a post office. He returned to the factory after having been liberated from prison in 1917, but by April 1918 was leading a partisan detachment against forces of the Austro-German intervention and the Don Cossack Host.
In 1918, the Soviet authorities assigned Zin′kovskii to underground work in Ukraine, but in August of that year he joined the Makhnovists as, in succession, assistant commander of a regiment, assistant chief of the counterintelligence section of the army, chief of the intelligence staff of the 1st Donetsk Corps, and (during the operations against the Russian Army of P. N. Wrangel in 1920) commandant of the Crimean Group. On 28 August 1921, he escaped with Makhno into Romania, where he worked in a timber factory.
In June 1924, Zin′kovskii illegally crossed back into Soviet territory (possibly as a member of a Romanian-sponsored espionage mission) and voluntary surrendered himself to the OGPU. From December 1924, he then worked for the OGPU (and later the NKVD) of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in a variety of capacities, but chiefly in covert operations designed to monitor and entrap former Makhnovist émigrés and members of ROVS. He was frequently promoted and decorated for his successes in this field. Nevertheless, Zin′kovskii was arrested by the NKVD on 26 August 1937 and found guilty of espionage and terrorism. He was executed on 25 September 1938, and was posthumously rehabilitated in 1990.
ZINOV′EV, GEORGII VASIL′EVICH (20 November 1887–26 April 1934). Born in St. Petersburg, the Soviet military commander G. V. Zinov′ev was a graduate of the Sevastopol′ Military Aviation School (1917) and the Red Military Academy (1923). He served as a pilot with the Russian Army during the First World War, joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) in 1917, and after the October Revolution, was elected as chairman of the soldiers’ committee of the 3rd Siberian Rifle Corps on the Western Front. There, in early 1918 he helped suppress the Dowbor-Muśnicki uprising and, from February to April 1918, was head of the Smolensk garrison.
Zinov′ev was then transferred to the southern Urals, where from May 1918 to January 1919, he commanded Red Army forces raised in the Orenburg, Aktiubinsk, and Orsk regions in battles against the Cossack forces of Ataman A. I. Dutov and the Czechoslovak Legion, before being named commander of the Orenburg Rifle Division (February–March 1919). He then commanded the Turkestan Red Army (11 March–22 May 1919) and the 1st Red Army (25 May 1919–12 November 1920) in battles against the Russian Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak, playing a key role in the defeat of the White Turkestan Army in the Southern Urals and Transcaspia and assisting in the capture of Orenburg, Orsk, Aktiubinsk, and Bukhara for the Reds. From November 1920 to March 1921, he was a member of the Revvoensovet of the Turkestan Front.
From 1923, Zinov′ev served in various posts in the administration and command of Soviet air forces, from 1928 was head of the Military Construction Section of the Red Army, and from May 1932 was head of the Military-Engineering Academy. He won the Order of the Red Banner twice and was the recipient of the ceremonial Gold Sword of the Turkestan Republic.
ZINOV′EV, GRIGORII EVSEEVICH (23 September 1883–25 August 1936). The Soviet political leader G. E. Zinov′ev—a close associate of V. I. Lenin before the revolution, but one of his chief critics in 1917—was born at Elizavetgrad (renamed Zinov′esk from 1924 to 27 December 1934; now Kirovohrad), in Kherson oblast′, as Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomysl′skii. (During his revolutionary career he was also known as Hirsch Apfelbaum.) He was of lower middle-class, Jewish origin (his parents ran a dairy farm), and apart from a few months spent at the Chemistry Faculty of Berlin University in 1906, had no formal education, having been educated at home. He joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1901, and when the party split in 1903, he immediately sided with the Bolsheviks. During the 1905 Revolution, he was active as a political agitator in St. Petersburg, and in 1907 he was elected as a candidate member of the party Central Committee. He was briefly imprisoned by the tsarist authorities in 1908, but was released due to ill health and went abroad to join Lenin in exile. On 17 January 1912, he became a member of the first Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks). After spending the First World War in exile in Switzerland, he returned to Russia, with Lenin, aboard the “sealed train” supplied by imperial Germany, arriving in Petrograd on 4 April 1917. He then edited the party newspaper, Pravda (“The Truth”), until that publication was banned by the Russian Provisional Government following the July Days. In this period, he often opposed Lenin’s policies and, during the October Revolution he (in collaboration with L. B. Kamenev) opposed the seizure of power, going so far as to publish a letter condemning the move in advance in Maxim Gorky’s newspaper. When presented with the fait accompli of the Bolsheviks’ toppling of the Provisional Government, he insisted on the inclusion in Sovnarkom of representatives of other socialist parties. When Lenin refused this (and then wrecked the Vikzhel′ talks), Zinov′ev (with four others) resigned from the Bolshevik Central Committee on 4 November 1917. He was reinstated a few days later, following the publication of an apologetic “Letter to Comrades” in Pravda, but never fully regained the trust of Lenin, who now tended to rely on his new right-hand man, L. D. Trotsky (much to Zinov′ev’s chagrin).
Nevertheless, in January 1919 Zinov′ev became head of the Soviet regime in Petrograd and head of party organizations in that region; in March 1919, he was elected to the chair of the Executive Committee of the Komintern. (In that last capacity, in September 1920, he also presided over the Congress of the Peoples of the East at Baku.) During the civil wars, he was responsible for the defense of Petrograd against the forces of General N. N. Iudenich, a task he performed badly, leading to clashes with Trotsky. During the debate on trade unions in 1920, he supported Lenin’s line and was rewarded with a place in the Politbiuro on 16 March 1921, despite the fact that his ruthless governance of Petrograd had led at this time to a great strike wave and, in part, to the Kronshtadt Revolt. He was also, as head of the Komintern, widely condemned by Leftists for the failure of the communist uprising in Germany in October 1923, but managed to deflect the criticism onto Karl Radek, the Komintern’s representative in Germany, and remained one of the most powerful figures in the party.