Reds and the Green

Reviews / Votes

"O'Connor's book is salutary for republicans to gain an historical perspective on one of the many Marxist groups that have attempted by stealth to influence republican policy." An Phoblacht Nov 2004 "tells how, 80 years ago, the fledgling Soviet Union tried to co-opt the IRA into its goals of world revolution. O'Connor's trawl through the Moscow archives of the Comintern has unearthed documents that speak from the past of hopeless idealism, wasted journeys and ruined dreams." Financial Times August 2005 "Emmet O'Connor has produced a unique history of the relationship between the left in Ireland and the Comintern which has been lacking so far ... essential reading for anyone attempting to understand the story of the Left in Ireland." Irish Democrat Aug/Sept 2005 "certainly worth a read, especially given its use of the Moscow archives. It is also salutary for republicans to gain an historical perspective on one of the many Marxist groups that have attempted to influence republican policy." Economic and Philosophic Science Review 2005 "O'Connor's book is a singular achievement, based as it is on a prodigious mining of the huge communist archives that became available after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and of a wide range of archival material in Ireland and Britain. The consequence of the author's painstaking research is that this study, unlike any previous work on Irish communism, is able to successfully situate, and minutely describe, the handful of Irish activists as part of a Moscow-centred global movement..." Irish Economic and Social History 2005 "These are persuasive judgements, and their implications go well beyond a small country in which an organised communist movement was never more than a marginal presence." English Historical Review XCCCI Feb 2006