BOOK REVIEW: ‘The Zinoviev Letter’ by Gill Bennett

OPINION:

THE ZINOVIEV LETTER: THE CONSPIRACY THAT NEVER DIES

By Gill Bennett

Oxford University Press, $34.95, 340 pages

 

For almost a century, a suspected forged letter advocating Russian meddling in a British election has bedeviled politicians of all denominations, especially the Labor Party.

As an outsider taking my first intensive look at the “evidence” behind “The Zinoviev Letter,” I can only conclude that the prolonged boo-hooing by leftists should have been tossed into the rubbish bin of history decades ago.

Yet the supposed “mystery” of the letter shows no signs of abating. Now we have a book by Gill Bennett, chief historian of the British Foreign Office (1995-2005), which offers what is a logical conclusion.

The background: In 1924, the Labor Party ruled Britain for the first time. Times were tense. The Soviet Union, acting through the Communist International (the Comintern), was urging the violent overthrow of governments worldwide, and especially those in Britain and colonial India.

Oblivious to the Red threat, Labor pressed for the diplomatic recognition of the Russian government. Understandably, conservatives opposed such a move, insisting that any agreement include a Soviet promise not to try to influence British politics. Moscow refused any such pledge.

The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) happily allied itself with Moscow’s call to revolution. To cite one episode: John Ross Campbell, a leading Scottish communist and assistant editor of the Workers’ Weekly, published an article calling on the armed forces to join to form “the nucleus of an organization that will prepare the whole of the soldiers, sailors and airmen, not merely to refuse to go to war but to go forward in a common attack upon the capitalists and smash capitalism forever.”

The government first moved to prosecute Campbell for “exciting mutiny” in the armed forces but backed down under leftist protests about “freedom of speech.”

But other statements urging voter mobilization in favor of Labor continued, many under the signature of Grigori Zinoviev, the Comintern chairman who was a key figure in the government of Joseph Stalin. (He would be shot during the 1930s terror.)

Then, on Oct. 9, SIS received a decoded telegram from its station in Riga, the Latvian capital, an intelligence listening post. Addressed to the central committee of the CPGB and bearing the signature of Zinoviev, the two-and-a-half-page letter was a plea for the re-election of Prime Minister J. Ramsay MacDonald and Labor.

A key sentence read, “Armed warfare must be preceded by a struggle against the inclination to compromise” embedded among the majority of British workmen. It called for enlistment of “the more talented military specialists.”

The letter was said to have come from an agent designated “FR3/K,” part of a network that had previously produced letters from Zinoviev to communists worldwide. The agent’s reports had proved valid in the past.

Given the intelligence source, nothing official was said. MacDonald cautioned that any protest “must be well-founded.”

After inquiries of SIS, a Foreign Office official accepted the authenticity of the letter and prepared a protest letter for MacDonald’s signature. And here Ms. Bennett addresses what became the key issue of the controversy. Based on Foreign Office documents she examined, the SIS certification, made by Maj. Desmond Morton, was “built on shaky ground.” No evidence was found that he had talked with the claimed source of the letter. Nor could his claim be confirmed that a “source” in the CPGB confirmed receipt of the letter.

Nonetheless, the language in the letter jibed with that in numerous other communiques from Zinoviev in SIS’ possession.

Given the tight overlap of senior SIS officers and the London conservative establishment, word of an explosive “red letter” quickly circulated. The Daily Mail broke the story on Oct. 25 under the headline, “Civil War Plot by Socialists’ Masters: Moscow Orders to our Reds.”

The accompanying article said the letter had been seen by MacDonald “some weeks ago,” implying that the government had protested only in response to the press disclosure.

Predictably, Bolshevik officials denounced the letter as a a fraud and a “dirty trick.” The CPGB denied receiving any such letter, denouncing it as a “clumsy fabrication.”

Plot or not, in voting on Oct. 29, the Conservative Party gained 161 seats in Parliament; Labor lost 40. (Ms. Bennett suggests that the furor over the earlier Campbell article could have done electoral damage equal to the Zinoviev document.)

That the letter was dubious seems obvious. The question remains: Did the SIS create the forgery? Or was the letter planted on a willingly gullible agency? Forgery was a major industry in the Bolshevik era, with both enemies and supporters of the Reds exchanging vicious broadsides.

Nonetheless, the author states, the “bitter experience was a breeding ground for dissension and recrimination,” which continues to this day.

• Joseph Goulden writes frequently on intelligence matters.