Revolutionary Connections

Overview & Synopsis

Revolutionary Connections: Russia and Ireland, 1905–1923 examines political, social and cultural relations between Russia and Ireland from the 1905 Russian Revolution to the end of the Irish Civil War in 1923. Drawing on extensive Russian and Irish archival accounts, newspapers, diaries, letters, memoirs, literary and visual sources, it looks in both directions at Irish responses to Russian revolutionary change and at representations of Ireland in Russian-language texts. It offers a unique account of international engagement in revolutionary Russia and Ireland and of how Ireland was imagined beyond the Anglophone world. From at least the late nineteenth century, Ireland featured in Russian liberal, conservative and radical debates about land politics, self-determination and empire. Equally, Irish commentators from across the political spectrum used Russia as a lens onto questions of imperialism, anti-imperialism and socialism. This mutual, if selective and conditional, engagement reflected wider technological changes in news communication and the expansion of international news agencies. Revolutionary Connections also shows how diasporic networks, including in Britain and the US, helped to shape Russo-Irish relations and reflects on Irish interest in different parts of the Russian empire, including Ukraine, Finland and Poland. Through five thematic chapters, it considers Russo-Irish relations from contrasting and often overlooked angles, including Irish eyewitness experiences on the Eastern front during World War One and religious perspectives. Using a transnational methodology and expansive source base, it offers a fresh angle on the entangled history of revolutions in the early twentieth century and the translation of news and ideas across borders.