Despite initially warm relations between the Bolsheviks and the underground Dáil administration in 1920, it would be another 54 years before formal diplomatic relations were established, when a Soviet embassy opened on Dublin’s Orwell Road, and Irish diplomat, Jim Sharkey, turned the key in the door of an Irish embassy in Moscow.

In conversation with History Ireland editor, Tommy Graham, he recalls how it happened, the wider Cold War context, and his subsequent experience as Irish ambassador in Moscow in the early 2000s, including a meeting with President Vladamir Putin.

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