"The only son of a famous astronomer, Guido Baracchi helped launch Australia's Communist Party and served, for a time, as its leading intellectual. The Sun dubbed him 'Melbourne's Lenin', while ASIO classified him 'a person of bad moral character and violent and unstable political views'." "He battled Robert Menzies at university, worked as a professional revolutionary in Weimar Berlin, survived Stalin's Russia and went to gaol in Melbourne. He romanced - and broke the hearts of - beautiful, intelligent women, including the novelist Katharine Susannah Prichard, the poet Lesbia Harford and the playwright Betty Roland." "Stylish, wealthy, with a taste for literature and the arts, Guido Baracchi was never a typical fellow-traveller, and the Communist Party expelled him twice. But long after many more orthodox radicals gave up the struggle Guido continued to fight." "For more than seventy years, romantics and rebels of all stripes saw in the Communist Party the best hope for a world remade. Here is also the story of those who dedicated themselves to that beautiful dream, their experience of its shimmering promise - and of its shattering collapse.

This book rediscovers a fascinating life - and makes a provocative argument about the history and the future of politics in Australia."--BOOK JACKET.