Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  (1868-1953), Menshevik leader; president of Georgia.

  The most important leader of the Georgian Social Democrats (Mensheviks), Noe Nikolayevich Zhordania was born in western Georgia to a petty noble family. Educated at the Tiflis Orthodox Seminary (just years before Josef Stalin entered that institute that bred so many revolutionaries), Zhordania went on to Warsaw for further education and there was introduced to Marxism. His writings in the Georgian progressive journal kvali (trace) in the early 1890s inspired young radicals soon to be known as the mesame dasi (third generation). Zhordania combined a Marxist critique of Russian autocracy and the Armenian-dominated capitalism of his native Georgia with a patriotism that appealed broadly to workers, students, and peasants. By 1905 he had affiliated with the more moderate wing of Russian Social Democracy, the Mensheviks, and took the bulk of Georgian Social Democrats along with him. Radicals like the young Stalin were isolated in the Georgian party and eventually made their careers outside the country.

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  During the first Russian Revolution in 1905-1906, the Mensheviks dominated Georgia, essentially routing tsarist authority in the country, but brutal repression restored the rule of the government. In 1906 Zhordania was elected to the first State Duma, the new parliament conceded by the tsar. But within a few months the tsar dissolved the duma, and Zhordania and other radicals signed the Vyborg Manifesto protesting the dissolution. Zhordania was forced into the political underground, writing for clandestine newspapers and sparring in print with Stalin over the question of non-Russian nationalities.

  With the outbreak of the revolution in 1917 Zhordania became the chairman of the Tiflis Soviet. He was an opponent of the Bolshevik victory in Petrograd in October of that year and was instrumental in the declaration of an independent Georgian republic on May 26, 1918. Zhordania was elected president of the republic and served until the invasion of the Red Army in February 1921. From exile in France he planned an insurrection against the Communist government, but the revolt of August 1924 was bloodily suppressed by the Soviets. Zhordania spent his last years in exile, largely in France, writing his memoirs, conspiring with Western intelligence agencies against the Soviets in Georgia, still the acknowledged leader of a movement whose members fought bitterly one with another. See also: CAUCAUS; GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS; MENSHEVIKS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Jones, Stephen. (1989). “Marxism and Peasant Revolt in the Russian Empire: The Case of the Gurian Republic.” Slavonic and East European Review 67(3): 403-434. Suny, Ronald Grigor. (1994). The Making of the Georgian Nation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

  RONALD GRIGOR SUNY

  ZHUKOV, GEORGY KONSTANTINOVICH

  (1896-1974), marshal of the Soviet Union (1943), four-time Hero of the Soviet Union, and the Red Army’s “Greatest Captain” during the Soviet Union’s Great Patriotic War (World War II).

  Stalin’s closest wartime military confidant, Georgy Zhukov was a superb strategist and pracENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  ZHUKOV, GEORGY KONSTANTINOVICH

  titioner of operational art who nonetheless displayed frequent tactical blemishes. Unsparing of himself, his subordinates, and his men, he was renowned for his iron will, strong stomach, and defensive and offensive tenacity.

  A veteran of World War I and the Russian Civil War, Zhukov graduated from the Senior Command Cadre Course in 1930 and became deputy commander of the Belorussian Military District in 1938 and commander of Soviet Forces in Mongolia in 1939. After Zhukov defeated Japanese forces at Khalkhin Gol in August 1939, Stalin appointed him commander of the Kiev Special Military District in June 1940 and Red Army Chief of Staff and Deputy Peoples’ Commissar of Defense in January 1941.

  During World War II, Zhukov served on the Stavka VGK (Headquarters of the Supreme High Command) as First Deputy Peoples’ Commissar of Defense and Deputy Supreme High Commander, as Stavka VGK representative to Red Army forces, and as front commander. In June 1941 Zhukov orchestrated the Southwestern Front’s unsuccessful armored counterstrokes near Brody and Dubno against German forces in Ukraine. As Reserve Front (army group) commander from July to September, Zhukov slowed the German advance at Smolensk, prompting Hitler to delay his offensive against Moscow temporarily. Zhukov directed the Leningrad Front’s successful defense of Leningrad in September 1941 and the Western Front’s successful defense and counteroffensive at Moscow in the winter of 1941-1942.

  In the summer of 1942, Zhukov’s Western Front conducted multiple offensives to weaken the German advance toward Stalingrad and, in November-December 1942, led Operation Mars, the failed companion piece to the Red Army’s Stalingrad counteroffensive (Operation Uranus), against German forces west of Moscow. During the winter campaign of 1942-1943, Zhukov coordinated Red Army forces in Operation Spark, which partially lifted the Leningrad blockade, and Operation Polar Star, an abortive attempt to defeat German Army Group North and liberate the entire Leningrad region. While serving as Stavka VGK representative throughout 1943 and 1944, Zhukov played a decisive role in Red Army victories at Kursk and Belorussia, the advance to the Dnieper, and the liberation of Ukraine, while suffering setbacks in the North Caucasus (April-May 1943) and near Kiev (October 1943). Zhukov commanded the First Belorussian Front in the libera Marshal Georgy Zhukov led the Red Army to victory in World War II and helped bring Nikita Khrushchev to power in 1953. © HULTON ARCHIVE tion of Poland and the victorious but costly Battle of Berlin.

  After commanding the Group of Soviet Occupation Forces, Germany, and the Soviet Army Ground Forces, and serving briefly as Deputy Armed Forces Minister, Zhukov was “exiled” in 1946 by Stalin, who assigned him to command the Odessa and Ural Military Districts, ostensibly to remove a potential opponent. Rehabilitated after Stalin’s death in 1953, Zhukov served as minister of Defense and helped Khrushchev consolidate his political power in 1957. When Zhukov resisted Khrushchev’s policy for reducing Army strength, at Khrushchev’s instigation, the party denounced Zhukov, ostensibly for “violating Leninist principles” and fostering a “cult of Comrade G.K. Zhukov” in the army. Replaced as minister of Defense by Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky in October 1957 and retired in March 1958, Zhukov’s reputation soared once again after Khrushchev’s removal as Soviet leader in 1964.

  ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

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  ZHUKOVSKY, NIKOLAI YEGOROVICH

  See also: KHRUSHCHEV, NIKITA SERGEYEVICH; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH; WORLD WAR II

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Anfilov, Viktor. (1993). “Georgy Konstantinovich Zhu-kov.” In Stalin’s Generals, ed. Harold Shukman. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Glantz, David M. (1999). Zhukov’s Greatest Defeat: The Red Army’s Epic Disaster in Operation Mars, 1942. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Zhukov, Georgy Konstantinovich. (1985). Reminiscences and Reflections. 2 vols. Moscow: Progress.

  DAVID GLANTZ

  ZHUKOVSKY, NIKOLAI YEGOROVICH

  (1847-1921), scientist whose research typified the innovative avionics of prerevolutionary Russia.

  Like a number of other outstanding Russian scientists of the early Soviet period, Nikolai Yegorovich Zhukovsky was trained in the tsarist era and began his scientific career before the revolution. A specialist in aerodynamics and hydrodynamics, he supervised the construction of one of the world’s first experimental wind tunnels in 1902 and founded the first European institute of aerodynamics in 1904. He was a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Early in the Soviet period, Zhukovsky was chosen to head the new Central Aero-Hydrodynamics Institute.

  Zhukovsky developed the principal concepts underlying the science of space flight, and in that sense he was a pioneer, not only of aviation in prerevolutionary Russia, but of the later strides made by Soviet scientists. One of his innovations was the testing of intricate aerial maneuvers (e.g., loop-the-loop, barrel rolls, spins) based on his earlier studies of the flight of birds. Vladimir I. Lenin called Zhukovsky the “father of Russian aviation.” He died of old age at seventy-fo
ur. See also: AVIATION; SPACE PROGRAM

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Oberg, James E. (1981). Red Star in Orbit. New York: Random House. Petrovich, G. V., ed. (1969). The Soviet Encyclopedia of Space Flight. Moscow: Mir.

  ALBERT L. WEEKS

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  ZINOVIEV, GRIGORY YEVSEYEVICH

  (1883-1936), Bolshevik revolutionary leader and associate of Lenin who after 1917 became first an ally, then rival, of Stalin and later fell victim to the Great Purge.

  Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev was born as Yevsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky in Yeliza-vetgrad (later renamed Zinoviesk, now Kirovohrad, Kherson province, Ukraine). Of lower-middle-class Jewish origin, and with no formal education, he joined the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party in 1901. When the party split in 1903, Zinoviev followed Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik faction. Having gained experience as a political agitator in St. Petersburg during the 1905 Revolution, he became a member of the party’s Central Committee in 1907. After a brief term in prison the following year, Zinoviev was released because of his poor health and joined Lenin in western European exile. A fiery orator and provocative political writer, during the next ten years Zinoviev edited numerous Bolshevik publications and supported Lenin against opposition from both within the party and other revolutionary groups. In April 1917, after the overthrow of the tsar at the end of February, Zinoviev returned with Lenin to Russia on the “sealed” train through Germany and took over editorship of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda until it was banned in July. During the year, however, Zinoviev increasingly took issue with Lenin’s confidence in Bolshevik strength and his refusal to collaborate with other socialist groups. In October, Zinoviev together with Lev Kamenev opposed the Bolshevik leader’s plans for an armed seizure of power. When Lenin the following month refused to include representatives of other socialist parties in the new Soviet government, Zinoviev (with four others) resigned from the Bolshevik Central Committee in protest. He was readmitted only a few days later after publication of his “Letter to the Comrades” in Pravda, in which he submitted to Party discipline. In January 1918, Zinoviev became head of the Pet-rograd Revolutionary Committee. In March 1919 he was elected chairman of the Executive Committee of the newly founded Communist International (Comintern). By 1921, he was a full member of the Politburo, chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, and leader of the regional Party organization. After Lenin’s death in January 1924, Zinoviev and Kamenev joined with Josef Vissarionovich Stalin in a tactical “triumvirate” to counter the aspirations of Leon Trotsky to the Party leadership. After TrotENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  ZUBATOV, SERGEI VASILIEVICH

  sky’s defeat in 1925, Stalin turned against his former allies, who strove to maintain their authority by realigning themselves with Trotsky in the United Opposition against Stalin. Politically out-maneuvered, Zinoviev lost control of the Leningrad party organization and the Comintern in 1926 and in November the following year was expelled from the Communist Party. By publicly recanting his opposition to Stalin on several occasions, Zinoviev strove in vain to rehabilitate himself. In January 1935 he was arrested on charges of “moral complicity” in the assassination of Leningrad Party leader Sergei Mironovich Kirov, tried in secret, and sentenced to ten years in prison. In August 1936, Zinoviev was brought before the public in the first Moscow show trial. Abjectly accepting all the charges of terrorism and treason levelled against him, Zinoviev was condemned to death and executed on August 25, 1936. He was rehabilitated by the Soviet government in 1988. See also: COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL; LENIN, VLADIMIR ILICH; SHOW TRIALS; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH; UNITED OPPOSITION; ZINOVIEV LETTER

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Haupt, Georges, and Marie, Jean-Jacques, eds. (1974). Makers of the Russian Revolution. London: Allen and Unwin. Hedlin, Myron W. (1975). “Zinoviev’s Revolutionary Tactics in 1917.” Slavic Review 34(1):19-43.

  NICK BARON

  ZINOVIEV LETTER

  Letter of mysterious provenance purporting to have been sent by Grigory Zinoviev, head of the Communist International (Comintern), to the British Communist Party with instructions to prepare for revolution.

  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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  ZYUGANOV, GENNADY ANDREYEVICH

  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.

  Zubatov himself was not a gendarme officer, but a civil servant who attained only the seventh rank (nadvornyi sovetnik), or lieutenant colonel in military terms. Had he risen through the hierarchical, regimented military, he probably would not have conceived of “police socialism.” This policy advocated not the redistribution of wealth but the backing of workers in economic disputes with employers. In 1901, with the patronage of senior Moscow officials, he organized societies that provided cultural, legal, and material services to factory workers. Within a year, analogous societies sprang up in other cities, including Minsk, Kiev, and Odessa.

  In the fall of 1902 Zubatov was invited to reorganize the nerve center of the Russian security police. As chief of the Special Section of the Police

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  Department in St. Petersburg, he created a network of security bureaus in twenty cities from Vilnius to Irkutsk. He staffed many of them with his proteges trained in the new methods of security policing and encouraged to deploy secret informants within the revolutionary milieu.

  Meanwhile, however, his worker societies slipped out of control. In July 1903 a general strike broke out in Odessa and labor unrest swept across the south. Zubatov advocated restraint, but the Minister of Interior, Vyacheslav Plehve, used troops to restore order. Disillusioned with Zubatov’s labor policies and suspecting him of personal disloyalty, Plehve banished him from the major cities of the empire. Zubatov refused invitations to return to police service after Plehve’s assassination in 1904. A monarchist to the last, he fatally shot himself following the emperor’s abdication in 1917. See also: PLEHVE, VYACHESLOV KONSTANTINOVICH