Since we are no prophets, none of us can say exactly how many months or years will pass before the victory of the proletarian revolution in the first of those important countries which really determine the fate of the World Revolution. One thing, however, we know exactly, and the new analysis of Europe’s economic situation at the Third Congress has again completely convinced us of it: The revolution is not over. We are not very far distant from the period in which new conflicts will begin, which will shake Europe and the whole world in a much greater degree than the sum total of all previous struggles.

Grigory Zinoviev (23 September 1883 {11 September O.S.} – 25 August 1936) was a Bolshevik revolutionary, chair of the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies (1917-1926), and chair of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (1919-1926). Born in 1883 in Elisavetgrad (today known as Kropyvnytskyi in Ukraine) in the Kherson Governorate of the Russian Empire, Zinoviev lacked formal education but began working as a teacher at 15. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1901 and actively participated in strike struggles. Zinoviev supported the Bolsheviks after the split with the Mensheviks in 1903 and became a key figure alongside Lenin. He played a significant role in the Petrograd party organization and was elected to the Central Committee in 1907. Zinoviev advocated internationalism during World War I and chaired the Comintern's Executive Committee in 1919. However, internal conflicts emerged within the Bolsheviks, leading to Zinoviev's opposition to the October Revolution's course and later conflicts with Trotsky. He eventually capitulated to Stalin, faced expulsion, and was later executed in the Moscow show trials of 1936.