The First Soviet in Ireland

Striking for better working conditions and equal pay, the attendants and patients of Monaghan asylum took over the hospital and hoisted a red flag. 

The burgeoning Soviet Union and the nascent Irish Republic seemed to give inspiration to each other, despite – or maybe precisely because of – the peculiar mixes of class and national interests they shared. Lenin, who reportedly spoke English with an Irish accent, was an admirer of the 1916 Easter Rising, the Irish republican insurrection against British rule. He saw national self-determination as a stepping stone to overturning western imperialism, which would inevitably lead to class-based revolution. With its religious aspects downplayed, the Rising remained a popular subject in the Soviet Union for decades to come. The Rising’s 50th anniversary was marked at the first Party Congress under Brezhnev and was widely celebrated and written about. In turn, the Soviet Union’s anti-British, anti-colonialist and anti-war stance energised the Irish independence movement; in 1917 some 10,000 people celebrated the Bolshevik coup at Dublin’s Mansion House. A year later the Declaration of Irish Independence was announced in the same building. 

In revolutionary Ireland, the working class labour struggle was having its moment as well. Conditions for Irish asylum attendants were grim. They lived on the grounds in overcrowded conditions, their lives controlled by their superiors: they could be fired without warning for a wide range of offences, including intemperance, unkindness, gossiping or disobeying orders, even if asked to do something that was not part of their job. 

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