13 Facts About Zinoviev letter

Zinoviev letter was a fake document published and sensationalised by the British Daily Mail newspaper four days before the general election of October 1924.

The letter purported to be a directive from Grigory Zinoviev, the head of the Communist International in Moscow, to the Communist Party of Great Britain, ordering it to engage in seditious activities.

The Zinoviev letter perhaps aided the Conservative Party by hastening the ongoing collapse of the Liberal Party vote, which, in turn, produced a Conservative landslide.

Publication of the Zinoviev letter was severely embarrassing to Prime Minister MacDonald and his Labour Party.

MacDonald's attempts to cast doubt on the authenticity of the Zinoviev letter were in vain, hampered by the document's widespread acceptance among government officials.

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Grigory Zinoviev letter issued a denial on 27 October 1924, which was finally published in English in the December 1924 issue of The Communist Review, the monthly theoretical magazine of the CPGB, well after the MacDonald government had already fallen.

Still, the Zinoviev letter helped to propel the Conservatives to a large parliamentary majority by allowing them to poach voters frightened by the First Red Scare from the withering Liberal bloc.

Zinoviev letter said that her husband had drafted the letter after fellow-emigre Alexander Gumansky told him that a request to forge the letter had come from "a person in authority in London".

Zinoviev letter had been an important source on Soviet matters for the Secret Intelligence Service since the war, raising the possibility that he already had deep links to British intelligence when involved with the Zinoviev letter.

Forgers appear to have studied Bolshevik documents and signatures extensively before creating the Zinoviev letter to undermine the Soviet regime's relations with the United Kingdom.

Zinoviev letter produced a long account of the affair, but the paper ultimately proved unpublishable because it contained sensitive operational and personnel information.

Zinoviev letter visited Moscow in the course of her research, working in the archives of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Comintern archive of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Zinoviev letter's report showed that the letter contained statements very similar to those made by Zinoviev to other communist parties and at other times to the CPGB, but at the time of the letter, Zinoviev and the Soviet government had adopted a more restrained attitude towards propaganda in Britain.