During the 1916 Easter Rising, Vladimir Lenin spoke of it positively calling it a decisive "blow against the power of English imperialism". In 1920 Roddy Connolly, the son of the Socialist Republican James Connolly who was executed by firing squad in the aftermath of the Easter Rising visited Lenin in Russia. Lenin informed Connolly that he had read his father’s book "Labour and Irish History" and that he rates him “head and shoulders” above other European socialists.