Abstract
T Ihis article presents what I call Communist hermeneutics of the soul-a complex ritual of words and deeds designed to permit the Party to determine who was worthy to belong to the brotherhood of the elect. ' Expanded immediately after the Bolsheviks seized power to almost all spheres of Party life, hermeneutics of the soul was embodied in a wide gamut of practices, among which were interrogations, purges, comrade trials, and campaigns of selfcriticism.2 Functioning as a meeting place between the traditional, Judeo-Christian notion of soul-seeking and modern psychological theory and practice, hermeneutics of the soul probed the deepest recesses of the human self.3 It set itself the task of establishing where each and every comrade came from, what had bought him into the movement, and what his
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