Grigory Zinoviev was a prominent member of the Bolshevik Party in the early days of the movement. He was closely associated with a man named Lev Kamenev and was a close friend of Vladimir Lenin during Lenin’s years in exile. Zinoviev disagreed with Lenin’s call to hold a revolution so soon, and wanted to wait until later. As a result, he got marginalized and played virtually no role in the October Revolution and he wasn’t involved in any party activities immediately after the revolution. However later on, he went on to become a member of the Politburo in 1919 and went on from that to serve and move up in the Soviet government. He even helped to get Leon Trotsky removed as war minister and at one time worked with Stalin. That is until he ran afoul of him and was arrested during Stalin’s purges in the 1930s along with Lev Kamenev. Zinoviev was a chief defendant in a 1936 dog and pony show trial called the Trial of the Sixteen. Lenin was long gone having had died 12 years earlier, so he didn’t have him to help him out. That trial marked the start of the so-called Great Terror in the USSR and both Zinoviev and Kamenev had agreed to plead guilty to charges in exchange for their lives. Stalin supposedly agreed to this but then ordered their executions immediately afterwards and as a consequence, this resulted in his execution the very day after the convictions.
