Engineering your own soul: theory and practice in communist biography and autobiography & Communism: a love story

The creative project Communism: a love story is a piece of literary non-fiction: a biography of the communist intellectual Guido Carlo Luigi Baracchi (1887-1975). It investigates Baracchi's privileged childhood as the son of the government astronomer and a wealthy heiress, his career as a university activist, his immersion in Melbourne's radical and artistic milieu during the First World War, his role in the formation of the Communist Party of Australia, his changing attitudes to communism during the 1920s and 1930s while in Australia and overseas and his eventual identification with the Trotskyist movement. The project explores the different strands of thought within Australian communism, the impact of Stalinisation on the movement both in Australia and overseas, and the personal and political difficulties confronting facing anti-Stalinist radicals. It examines the tensions bet ween Baracchi's political commitments and his upbringing, and situates Baracchi's tumultuous romantic relationships (with Katharine Susannah Prichard, Lesbia Harford, Betty Roland and others) in the context of his times and political beliefs.<br><br>The exegesis Engineering your own soul: theory and practice in communist biography and autobiography examines the political and artistic tensions within the biographical and autobiographical writings of Betty Roland and Katharine Susannah Prichard in the context of the development of the world communist movement.<br>