Nick Maxwell ANU Productions Tenement Museum, 14 Henrietta Street, Dublin 1 By John Gibney Hentown is the latest in ANU Productions’ongoing series of location-specific dramas that endeavour to explore murky and uncomfortable aspects of modern Irish history and, more recently, aspects of the ‘Decade of Centenaries’.Hentown moves away from the period 1913–23 but returns ANU to the … Read more
Dr Patrick McCartan’s mission to Moscow, spring 1921. By Michael Quinn When Éamon de Valera, president of the First Dáil Éireann, boarded the SS Celtic bound for New York out of Liverpool in June 1919, his mission to the USA was twofold: to seek recognition for the Irish Republic from the US government and to … Read more
Before Dr McCartan had set sail for his ill-fated assignment in Moscow it was becoming clear that the presence of his two Bolshevik contacts in America was no longer acceptable to the US government. The Palmer raids increasingly took their toll on American left-wing and pro-Soviet circles, and foreigners were especially targeted for arrest and … Read more
By Lar Joye Three large arms plants were developed in the 1920s by the new Soviet government, as it attempted to modernise the old Czar’s army in the wake of the Revolution. These modern plants would eventually produce the world’s most famous firearm, the AK-47 assault rifle. There are an estimated 80 million of these … Read more
‘A blow delivered against the British imperialist bourgeoisie in Ireland is a hundred times more significant than a blow of equal weight in Africa or Asia’ (Lenin on the 1916 Easter Rising). By Jérôme aan de Wiel In April 1917 the Germans sent Lenin aboard a sealed train from Switzerland to Russia with the aim … Read more