Our penultimate lecture this year focused on Nikita Khrushchev the leader of the post-Stalinist Soviet Union.  The lecture began with a lively focus on the film The Death of Stalin (2017).  Stalin had left no instructions for what would happen after his death and after a power struggle Khrushchev emerged as the leader.  Daria covered the release of prisoners from the Gulag, his ‘secret speech,’ the reforms he introduced often referred to as The Thaw, the regional autonomy that emerged and the progress of the Cold War.  The extent of the Gulag was revealed not only by the numbers imprisoned but the massive network of camps.  The contradictions of the Secret Speech given to a party who knew only too well what they had been involved in were illustrated by how Khrushchev tackled the question of why he had not spoken out, when none of the others in the party congress had either.  Daria showed how this speech affected those in the Eastern Block.  She examined the economic reforms including the low cost housing ‘Khruschevski’, the import of food but also the failure of the Virgin Lands reforms.  The picture that emerged of Khrushchev was of two steps forward, one step back reformer.  A key insight was the emphasis on regional autonomy which in the long term would be a major factor in the fall of the USSR.  This regional autonomy would lead to 300,000 Ukrainians forming a human chain stretching 482 km (300 mi) from Kyiv to Lviv in 1990. The lecture linked the fall of USSR to the limits of Khrushchev’s reforms but also the key question of why the USSR fell but Communist China has survived.  It was followed by a very informed Q&A session which included a strong discussion of how the celebrations of the Great Patriotic War were not a feature of either the Stalin post-war era or Khrushchev’s unlike that of Brezhnev or Putin.  Our audience of 54 included 16 local sixth formers from 4 schools and nine guests who we hope will become members next year.