After Stalins death in 1953, successive leaders tried to find ways to revitalise the Soviet regime and rethink its promises to the Soviet people. Life within a system no longer based on terror and intense industrial transformation (yet still striving to reach communism) offered citizens strange alternatives.

The commemoration of Bolshevism hampered attempts to enthuse the population about the Soviet future. Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev tried to re-infuse the spirit of revolution as well as to stave off disillusionment with Soviet ideology, demonstrating the complex legacy of the Russian Revolution.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-ussr-in-the-cold-war-years

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