Encyclopedia of Russian History

The letter was first published on October 25, 1924, four days before a general election, in the British newspaper Daily Mail under the headline “Civil War Plot by Socialists’ Masters.” Its appearance caused great embarrassment to the Labour government of Ramsey MacDonald, which on February 2 of that year had bestowed diplomatic recognition on the Soviet Union and on August 10 had concluded a series of trade treaties, now awaiting parliamentary ratification. A conservative vicENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY tory in the October 29 elections signaled instead the launch of a vigorously anti-Soviet line, culminating in the abrogation of diplomatic ties in May 1927. Denounced immediately by the Soviet government as a forgery, investigations at the time and since have failed to discover conclusive proof of the letter’s authorship, which has been variously attributed to White Russian ?migr?s, Polish spies, the British secret services, communist provocateurs, or possibly even to Zinoviev. In January 1999, the British government published a report on the letter based on research in British and Russian secret service archives. This proposed that the document was a forgery instigated by White Russian agents in Berlin, carried out in Riga, Latvia, drawing on genuine intelligence information concerning Comintern activities, and channeled by British intelligence to Britain, where certain right-wing members of the security service proved eager to vouch for its authenticity and ensure it reached the press. The letter and subsequent “Red scare” did not, however, cause Labour’s electoral defeat or discredit the party, which had already suffered a parliamentary vote of no confidence and loss of Liberal support. Indeed, the Labour party’s vote in 1924 grew by one million over the previous year’s election. See also: GREAT BRITAIN, RELATIONS WITH; ZINOVIEV, GRIGORY YEVSEYEVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andrew, Christopher. (1977). “The British Secret Service and Anglo-Soviet Relations in the 1920s, Part 1: From the Trade Negotiations to the Zinoviev Letter.” The Historical Journal 20:673-706. Bennett, Gill. (1999). “A Most Extraordinary and Mysterious Business.” In The Zinoviev Letter of 1924. London: Foreign amp; Commonwealth Office, General Services Command. Chester, Lewis; Fay, Stephen; and Young, Hugo. (1967). The Zinoviev Letter. London: Heinemann.

NICK BARON

ZUBATOV, SERGEI VASILIEVICH

(1864-1917), senior security police official.

Born and raised in Moscow, the son of a military officer, Sergei Zubatov was a staunch defender of the Russian monarchy who reorganized the Russian security police and created progovernment

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labor organizations. These activities earned him fear and anger from the revolutionary activists with whom he matched wits, as well as from more conservative government officials.

Zubatov had exceptional rhetorical talents and a magnetic personality. He was the best-read student in his high school and the leader of a discussion circle. Although he associated with radical intellectuals, he advocated reform and opposed revolution. A self-proclaimed follower of Dmitry Pis-arev, he believed that education and cultural development offered the best path to social improvement. He left high school before graduation, in 1882 or 1883, worked in the Moscow post office, and married the proprietress of a private self-education library that stocked forbidden books. Yet he developed monarchist views and became a police informant in 1885. He openly joined the security police in 1889 after radical activists discovered his dual role.

As director of the Moscow security bureau from 1896, Zubatov led the antirevolutionary fight. Activists who fell into his snares found a well-read official who argued passionately that only revolutionary violence was preventing the absolutist monarchy from implementing reforms. Using charm and eloquence, he recruited talented, and sometimes dedicated, secret informants who laid bare the revolutionary underground. He systematized the use of plainclothes detectives, created a mobile surveillance brigade staffed with two dozen such detectives, and trained gendarme officers from around the empire. The major revolutionary organizations found it hard to withstand Zubatov’s sophisticated assault.