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=== Impact === [[File:Rakovsky letter to UK.jpg|right|thumb|[[Christian Rakovsky]] dictates a note to the British government in response to the Zinoviev letter, denying its authenticity.]] Most historians now agree that the letter had little immediate impact on the Labour vote, which not only held up but, in fact, increased slightly in terms of its share of the popular vote (although the main reason for this uptick was that the party fielded candidates in 87 more constituencies than it had in the previous election). Still, the letter helped to propel the Conservatives to a large parliamentary majority by allowing them to poach voters frightened by the First Red Scare from the withering Liberal bloc. The Conservative politician [[Robert Rhodes James]] claimed that the letter provided Labour "with a magnificent excuse for failure and defeat. The inadequacies that had been exposed in the Government in its brief existence could be ignored".<ref>{{cite book|author=Robert Rhodes James|author-link=Robert Rhodes James|title=The British Revolution|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VeQZY8_rlLgC|year=1977|page=194}}</ref> Indeed, many Labourites for years blamed the letter, at least in part, for the defeat of the party. Figures such as Taylor believed that some of them misunderstood the political forces at work and learned the wrong lessons. Many others, however, have held up the letter as a chief factor in the election outcome.<ref>Taylor, ''English History: 1914β1945'', pp. 219β220, 226β227</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Charles Loch Mowat|title=Britain Between the Wars, 1918β1940|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lNgOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA188|year=1955|publisher=Taylor & Francis|pages=188β194}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Andrew J Williams|title=Labour and Russia: The Attitude of the Labour Party to the USSR, 1924β1934|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9D4NAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA18|year=1989|publisher=Manchester U.P.|page=18|isbn=978-0719026249}}</ref> The real significance of the election was that the Liberal Party, whom Labour had displaced as the second-largest political party in 1922, became once again a minor party, its no-confidence gambit having completely backfired. A 1967 British study concluded the Labour Party was destined for defeat in October 1924 in any event and argued that the primary effect of the purported Comintern communiquΓ© fell on Anglo-Soviet relations: {{quote|Under Baldwin, the British Government led the diplomatic retreat from Moscow. Soviet Russia became more isolated, and, of necessity, more isolationist. [...] The Zinoviev letter hardened attitudes, and hardened them at a time when the Soviet Union was becoming more amenable to diplomatic contact with the capitalist world. The proponents of world revolution were being superseded by more pliant subscribers to the [[Stalinism|Stalin's philosophy]] of "[[Socialism in One Country|Building Socialism in One Country]]". Thus, after successfully weathering all the early contradictions in Soviet Diplomacy, Britain gave up when the going was about to become much easier. And it gave up largely because the two middle-class parties suddenly perceived that their short-term electoral advantage was best served by a violent anti-Bolshevik campaign.<ref>Lewis Chester, Steven Fay, and Hugo Young, ''The Zinoviev Letter: A Political Intrigue.'' Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1968. p. xvii.</ref>}}
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