Fraud and forgery

This is a well-written, scrupulously researched and argued account of an enduring mystery that neatly illustrates the haphazard interactions of politics, bureaucracy and history. In 1924 Grigori Zinoviev was head of the Communist International, the propaganda arm of the Soviet regime. A letter in his name, dated 15 September and addressed to the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), urged comrades to foment insurrection in the armed forces and among munitions workers while publicly supporting the ratification of an Anglo-Soviet trade treaty and a large loan to Russia. Both were controversial issues for Ramsay MacDonald’s first-ever Labour government, elected in January of that year. On 2 October a translated copy of Zinoviev’s letter was sent to London by the Riga station of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also known as MI6), its source a still-unidentified agent. The letter reached SIS’s London headquarters on 9 October, the day after MacDonald’s government was defeated and another general election called.