Grigory Zinoviev (1883  1936), Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician. Zinoviev was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution. Head of the Communist International and the architect of several failed attempts to transform Germany into a communist country during the early 1920s. He was in competition against Joseph Stalin, who eliminated him from the Soviet political leadership in 1925, followed by removal from the Petrograd Soviet in 1926. He was a defendant in a 1936 show trial, which resulted in his execution the day after his conviction in August 1936.