“The Last of the Mohicans?” The IRA's “Operation Harvest” in an International Context

Abstract

In 1956, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) launched “Operation Harvest,” an overtly ambitious guerrilla effort that was meant to secure the political unity of Ireland by force of arms. It was waged against the backdrop of a “thaw” in international relations and drew inspiration from successful anti-colonial guerrilla struggles in Algeria and Cyprus. The IRA was unaware of the simultaneous, parallel, unsuccessful irredentist efforts in Central and Eastern Europe in which anti-communist guerrillas clashed with totalitarian security apparatuses of the USSR or its satellite states. Studying the latter campaigns, which had begun earlier and were conducted by far larger and more effective guerrilla forces, might have convinced the organisation that such insurgencies in post-1945 Europe had very little hope of success. This article for the first time thematically contrasts the irredentist efforts of the IRA and the parallel Central and Eastern European guerrillas. It aims to bring to light cases that are hardly ever discussed in the Irish context but which could be of surprising use if one wishes to comparatively assess Ireland or the IRA.

Keywords:

• Central Europe
• Eastern Europe
• “Harvest,” IRA
• Ireland

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the Editors of this issue of Terrorism and Political Violence and the anonymous reviewers for their comments. Moreover, he would also like to acknowledge the inspiration and encouragement from Professor Richard English and Dr. Shaun McDaid who read and commented on earlier versions of this article. Lastly, Professors Motyka, Stryjek, and Wnuk, all interviewed by the author, also deserve a special acknowledgment as their comparative work on Central and Eastern European insurgents breaks new ground in historical studies.

Notes

See, e.g.: Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (London: Macmillan, 2003) or Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA (London: Penguin, 2003).

See: Sean Swan, Official Irish Republicanism, 1962 to 1972 (Self Published, 2008), 3.

See: John Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army: History of the IRA, 1916–79 (London: Poolbeg, 1989), Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000), and Barry Flynn, Soldiers of Folly: The IRA Border Campaign 1956–1962 (Cork: Collins Press, 2009).

“Professor Joseph Lee of New York University delivered the first Annual QUB Irish Studies Lecture,” http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofPoliticsInternationalStudiesandPhilosophy/Research/ResearchSubjectAreas/ContemporaryIrishPoliticalHistory/CIPHEventsArchive/ (accessed May 17, 2015).

Tim Wilson's work, which comparatively assesses violence in Northern Ireland and Upper Silesia in the aftermath of World War I (WWI), is a perfect example of the innovative comparative approach, fuelled by the author's prolonged research in Upper Silesia. See: Tim Wilson, Frontiers of Violence: Conflict and Identity in Ulster and Upper Silesia, 1918–1922 (London: Oxford University Press, 2010).

See e.g.: Grzegorz Motyka, Rafał Wnuk, Tomasz Stryjek, Grzegorz Baran, Wojna po wojnie. Antysowieckie podziemie w Europie Środkowo-Wschodniej w latach 1944–1953 [A War after the War: Anti-Soviet Underground in Central-Eastern Europe 1944–1953] (Warszawa: Scholar, 2012).

Author's interview with Grzegorz Motyka, February 2, 2015, Warsaw.

See, e.g.: Matthew Lewis and Shaun McDaid, “Bosnia on the Border? Republican Violence in Northern Ireland during the 1920s and 1970s,” Terrorism and Political Violence (2015): doi:10.1080/09546553.2015.1043429, in which the authors dispel the myths of “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” in relation to the Northern Irish case.

See, e.g.: Danny Morrison, “From the Falls to Falluja,” http://www.dannymorrison.com/wp-content/dannymorrisonarchive/175.htm (accessed May 17, 2015).

See: Philipp Ther, “Beyond the Nation: The Relational Basis of a Comparative History of Germany and Europe,” Central European History 36, no. 1 (2003): 45–73.

Author's interview with Richard O'Rawe, former Provisional IRA member, May 28, 2007, Belfast.

See: Stephen Howe, Ireland and the Empire: Colonial Legacies in Irish History and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) for an assessment of and debate with the Irish legacies of alleged British colonialism.

See, e.g.: Mart Laar, Wojna w lesie: walka Estonii o przetrwanie 1944–1956 (Kraków: Egis, 2008) for a depiction of Soviet post-WWII policies as an attempt to effectively “eradicate” a nation.

See: Ryan Clarke and Stuart Lee, “The PIRA, D-Company, and the Crime-Terror Nexus,” Terrorism and Political Violence 20, no. 3 (2008): 376–95.

Johnny Ryan, “The Four P-Words of Militant Islamist Radicalization and Recruitment: Persecution, Precedent, Piety, and Perseverance,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 30, no. 11 (2007): 985–1011.

Abu Mus'ab al-Suri, “The Military Theory of the Global Islamic Resistance Call” [excerpt of his The Global Islamic Resistance Call] in Architect of Global Jihad: The Life of al-Qaida Strategist Abu Mus'ab al-Suri, edited by Brynjar Lia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 359.

Ryan (see note 15 above), 985.

Ibid., 999.

Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke, “Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology,” Qualitative Research in Psychology 3, no. 2 (2006): 77–101.

Ibid., 78, 79.

Ibid., Table 3, 97.

Ibid., 87, 97.

The U.S. Army, Marine Corps, Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), 2.

See: Nikita S. Khruschev, “The Crimes of the Stalin Era: Special Report to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,” https://archive.org/details/TheCrimesOfTheStalinEraSpecialReportToThe20thCongressOfThe for the full text of Khrushchev's speech (accessed May 17, 2015).

See: Violetta Gut, Józef Franczak ps. “Lalek”: ostatni partyzant poakowskiego podziemia (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, 2004).

Rafał Wnuk, “Antysowieckie podziemie estońskie, łotewskie, litewskie, ukraińskie, białoruskie i polskie. Zarys dziejów i próba porówniania” [“Anti-Soviet Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Belarussian and Polish Underground: A Historical Outline and an Attempt at Comparison in a War after the War”], edited by Grzegorz Motyka et al. (Warszawa: Scholar, 2012), 95.

Author's interview with Grzegorz Motyka (see note 7 above).

See: Laar, Wojna w lesie: walka Estonii o przetrwanie 1944–1956 (see note 13 above), 278–82 for more on the last Estonian “Forest Brother.”

See: http://www.census.ie/-in-History/Population-of-Ireland-1841-2006.151.1.aspx (accessed May 17, 2015) for statistics on the population of Ireland.

Juha Siltala, “Dissolution and Reintegration in Finland, 1914–1932: How Did a Disarmed Country Become Absorbed into Brutalization?” Journal of Baltic Studies 46, no. 1 (2015): 18.

Clair Wills, That Neutral Island: A Cultural History of Ireland during World War II (London: Faber and Faber, 2007), 110.

Eoin O Broin, Sinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism (London: Pluto Press, 2009), 150.

Michael Cox, “Bringing in the ‘International’: The IRA Ceasefire and the End of the Cold War,” International Affairs 73, no. 4 (1997): 671.

See: Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (London: The Bodley Head, 2010) for an overview of the Central European choices and fates between 1939 and 1945.

Teresa Whitfield, Endgame for ETA: Elusive Peace in the Basque Country (London: Hurst & Company, 2014), 44–45.

Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers' Party (Dublin: Penguin Ireland, 2009), 13.

Philip Short, Mitterand: A Study in Ambiguity (London: Vintage, 2014), 174.

See: Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962 (London: Macmillan, 1977) for a detailed account of the war in Algeria.

See: Robert W. White, Ruairi O Bradaigh: The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 104.

Ibid., 106.

See: Sean Mac Stíofáin, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (London: Gordon Cremonesi, 1975) for more on that issue.

Kazimierz Krajewski, Na straconych posterunkach. Armia Krajowa na Kresach Wschodnich Rzeczpospolitej (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2014), 676.

Author's interview with Rafał Wnuk, March 2, 2015, Warsaw.

Grzegorz Motyka, “Podziemie ukraińskie” [“Ukrainian Underground”] in A War After the War, edited by Motyka et al. (Warszawa: Scholar, 2012), 99.

Author's interview with Rafał Wnuk (see note 43 above).

Grzegorz Motyka, Ukraińska Partyzantka 1942–1960. Działalność Organizacji Ukraińskich Nacjonalistów i Ukraińskiej Powstańczej Armii (Warszawa: Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN, Oficyna Wydawnicza RYTM, 2006), 544.

See: White (note 39 above), for more information on O Bradaigh's career.

See: Anne Applebaum-Sikorska, Za żelazną kurtyną. Ujarzmienie Europy Wschodniej 1944–1956 (Warszawa: Świat Książki, 2013) for a perspective on the scale of repression of the black book of communism.

See: Marta Markowska, Wyklęci. Podziemie zbrojne 1944–1963 (Warszawa: Ośrodek Karta, 2013), 115–16.

Hanley and Millar (see note 36 above).

Hanley and Millar (see note 36 above), 5.

Coogan (see note 3 above), 309.

Hanley and Millar (see note 36 above), 5.

Author's interview with Grzegorz Motyka (see note 7 above).

Marcin Zaremba, Wielka Trwoga. Polska 1944–1947: Ludowa reakcja na kryzys (Kraków: Znak, Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN, 2012), 344.

To an extent, the IRA faced a similar experience while the backbone of its enemy in “the North” was formed not by the “occupation” forces of the British army but by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the B-Specials who recruited from Protestant, local inhabitants of the island of Ireland.

Author's interview with Rafał Wnuk (see note 43 above).

Author's interview with Sean Garland, June 28, 2007, Dublin.

Hanley and Millar (see note 36 above), 14–16.

Ibid., 17–18.

Moloney (see note 1 above), 51.

Peter Taylor, Provos: The IRA and Sinn Féin (London: Bloomsbury, 1998), 21.

Hanley and Millar (see note 36 above), 18.

Wnuk, “Antysowieckie podziemie estońskie, łotewskie, litewskie, ukraińskie, białoruskie i polskie,” (see note 26 above), 54–55.

Ibid., 32.

Motyka, Ukraińska partyzantka 1942–1960 (see note 46 above), 610.

Coogan (see note 3 above), 319.

“History of Population Censuses in Estonia,” http://www.stat.ee/62931 (accessed May 17, 2015).

“Ethnicities in Region of Latvia. Statistics,” http://www.roots-saknes.lv/Ethnicities/ethnicities_statistics.htm (accessed May 17, 2015).

See: Wnuk, “Antysowieckie podziemie …” (see note 26 above), 31, 47–48; Laar (see note 13 above), 64 provides different statistics for number of the so-called “forest brothers,” in, e.g., Latvia with allegedly 40,000 partisans active in the country.

Laar puts the number at 100,000. Ibid., 67.

Wnuk, “Antysowieckie podziemie …” (see note 26 above), 94.

See: Central Statistical Office, Demographic Yearbook of Poland 2014 (Warszawa: Główny Urząd Statystyczny, 2014), http://stat.gov.pl/obszary-tematyczne/roczniki-statystyczne/roczniki-statystyczne/rocznik-demograficzny-2014,3,8.html (accessed May 17, 2015).

Sławomir Poleszak and Rafał Wnuk, “Zarys dziejów polskiego podziemia niepodległościowego 1944–1956,” in Atlas polskiego podziemia niepodległościowego 1944–1956, edited by Sławomir Poleszak, Rafał Wnuk, Agnieszka Jaczyńska, and Magdalena Śladecka (Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2007), http://www.google.pl/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=14&ved=0CFsQFjAN&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpamiec.pl%2Fpa%2Fedukacja%2Fakcje-i-obchody%2Fogolnopolskie%2F1-marca-narodowy-dzien%2Fhistoria%2F10063%2CZarys-dziejow-polskiego-podziemia-niepodleglosciowego-1944-1956.pdf&ei=fl5YVZCeFOTSyAOt44DgBg&usg=AFQjCNE-Fx1yQ3lBGWQiXsRU2R47Skpb6g&bvm=bv.93564037,d.bGQ (accessed May 17, 2015).

Author's interview with Rafał Wnuk (see note 43 above).

Ibid., 502.

Hanley and Millar (see note 36 above), 17.

Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (London: Penguin, 2009), 602.

See: Flynn (see note 3 above).

See: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/campaign (accessed May 12, 2015).

Coogan (see note 3 above), 326–29.

Hanley and Millar (see note 36 above), 20.

Laar (see note 13 above), 281.

Krajewski (see note 42 above), 787.

Author's interview with Sean Garland (see note 58 above).

Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 (London: Profile Books, 2005), 450–536.

See: John Morrison, The Origins and Rise of Dissident Irish Republicanism: The Role and Impact of Organizational Splits (London: Bloomsbury, 2014) and Kacper Rekawek, Irish Republican Terrorism and Politics: A Comparative Study of the Official and Provisional IRA (London: Routledge, 2011) for a discussion on the emergence of the rival Irish republican factions.

See: Markowska (see note 49 above), 40–41.

Author's interview with Rafał Wnuk (see note 43 above).

Author's interview with Tomasz Stryjek, February 20, 2015, Warsaw.

Coogan (see note 3 above), 318.

See: Henry Patterson, Ireland's Violent Frontier: The Border and Anglo-Irish Relations during The Troubles (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

See: Pogrom! (Belfast: Six County Executive of the Republican Clubs, 1975).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kacper Rekawek

Kacper Rekawek, PhD, is an International Security Analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM).