Diacronie. Studi di Storia Contemporanea (Mar 2018)

Catholicism and anti-communism: the reactions of Irish intellectuals to revolutionary changes in Hungary (1918-1939)

  • Lili Zách has received her Masters Degrees in English (with specialization in Irish Studies) and History at the University of Szeged, Hungary, in 2006. She completed a PhD at the National University of Ireland, Galway, focusing on Irish perceptions of the small successor states of Austria-Hungary, 1914-1945. Her primary research interest lies in the field of Irish and Central European history in a transnational framework, with special attention to Irish links with Continental Europe in the first half of the twentieth century.

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1
pp. 1 – 24

Abstract

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Although far from the centres of conflict on the Continent, interwar Ireland was also exposed to the influence of extreme left and right-wing political movements. Overall, most Irish nationalists adopted an uncompromisingly anti-Communist stance and used the lack of political stability in East-Central Europe to emphasise the significance of Catholic values following the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. The present paper examines the attitude of Irish intellectuals to extreme political changes in post-war Hungary. It also aims to highlight the complexity of the “red scare” and its legacy in relation to anti-Semitism and even the border question throughout the 1930s.

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