'Actually existing' or ever-elusive, fulfilled, betrayed or finally toppled, the idea of revolution alternately galvanised, divided and disillusioned the socialist movement in the twentieth century. In this issue, three major features deal with different aspects of this experience.

John Newsinger's study of Irish labour in the early twentieth century is a glimpse of the revolution as aspiration, and the rich heritage of struggles that drew inheritance from it. It is Newsinger's contention that syndicalist and other working-class currents have been largely written out of this period of Irish history, and his own article goes a long way to redress the balance.

Allison Drew's interview with Joseph Leon Glazer offers a grimmer picture of the course the successful revolution took in Russia. The son of a pioneering South African socialist inspired by the vision of workers' power, Glazer recounts with understandable bitterness both his father's death as a victim of Stalin's Terror and his own experiences in the gulag.

Whether such experiences should be regarded as the inevitable sequel to the Russian Revolution or as its betrayal continues to arouse considerable controversy among socialist historians. As our final feature in this issue, Francis King hosts a roundtable discussion in which the historical significance of the revolution is assessed by a panel including Edward Acton, Monty Johnstone, Boris Kagarlitsky and Hillel Ticktin.