The Zinoviev Letter

A forged letter suggesting Soviet Russia was secretly directing British communists helped topple a British government days before an election — and it took over 70 years for the forgery to be officially confirmed.

The Zinoviev Letter was a document published four days before the 1924 British general election, purporting to be Soviet instructions for British communists to engage in seditious activities. Widely believed to have contributed to the Labour government's electoral defeat, it was later confirmed by a 1999 British government inquiry to be very likely a forgery, most probably created by anti-Bolshevik Russian émigrés or British intelligence figures sympathetic to their cause.

⇄disputed

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Quick facts

→The letter was published by the Daily Mail on October 25, 1924, just four days before the British general election.
→It purported to be from Grigory Zinoviev, a senior Soviet Communist International official, instructing British communists toward subversive activity.
→The ruling Labour government, then pursuing improved relations with the Soviet Union, lost the subsequent election, with the letter widely blamed as a contributing factor.
→A formal 1999 British Foreign Office historical inquiry concluded the letter was likely a forgery, probably originating from White Russian anti-Bolshevik émigrés, though it could not conclusively identify every individual involved or rule out some British intelligence complicity in its distribution.

Entities on file

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Zinoviev Letter (document)

1924 forged letter that likely contributed to a British Labour government's electoral defeat; confirmed probable forgery by a 1999 government inquiry.

→ published days before the election defeat of → Ramsay MacDonald✓documented

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Ramsay MacDonald (person)

British Labour Prime Minister whose government's election defeat is widely attributed partly to the Zinoviev Letter's publication.

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