headed the Information Department of the Comintern, while continuing to play a role in a factional war that swept the American Communist Party by supporting the various positions of the Ruthenberg-Lovestone faction which came before the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI). An acute factionalist, Pepper was early to attempt to bolster the standing of his American allies in Moscow by agitating against Leon Trotsky and accusing the Foster group of softness towards the discredited Soviet leader. Pepper was a delegate of the Communist Party of America to the 5th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI, convened in March 1925, to which he delivered the report of the Information Department on 6 April 1925. At the 6th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI, held in February and March 1926, Pepper was made an alternate member of the Presidium of ECCI and returned to the political commission of that body. At the 7th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI, held in November and December 1926, Pepper was named a member of the political commission, where he was instrumental in helping to remove his nemesis Grigory Zinoviev from the Comintern Presidency. In July 1927 Pepper was elected to the Presidium of ECCI. Pepper fell from favor in 1928 as Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Bukharin parted company in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with Pepper's political views coming under criticism at both the 9th Enlarged Plenum of ECCI and the 6th World Congress of the Comintern. In 1929, Stalin repeated accusations against him at the ECCI Presidium and in May 1929 the Comintern sent an open letter to the American Communist Party relaying the news that the "Pepper case" would shortly be submitted to the disciplinary International Control Commission (ICC) of the Comintern The ICC returned its verdict in September 1929, confirming the accusations made against Pepper and removing him from all functions in the Communist International. Following his dismissal from the Comintern, Pepper went to work in the Soviet government. At the time of his 1937 arrest, Pepper was serving as the head of the publicity department of the People's Commissariat of the Food Industry. Death and legacy Pepper was arrested by the Soviet secret police (NKVD) on 27 July 1937. Following extensive interrogation, he was convicted of "participation in a counter-revolutionary organization" in a summary trial on 8 February 1938, and executed that same day. Pepper was posthumously rehabilitated by the Military Collegium of