Reviewing Communism: Communist Review (Sydney) 1934-1966: A Checklist of Literary Material

Abstract

A number of recent books have testified to the significant role played in Australia's cultural history by the Communist Party of Australia (C.P.A.). However, despite these books, the history and the precise nature of communist influence. Communist Party policy and communist cultural discourse in Australia is not widely understood and remains obscure in important details. This is particularly true in relation to literature, for the visual arts seem to have been more accessible or attractive to research and have, in any case, a significantly different critical history. The present checklist is offered as a partial way of meeting the need for further analysis, and as a way of prompting such analysis by suggesting the range of issues, including questions of methodology, which it might embrace.