Son of former Soviet leader Khrushchev addresses U.

A crowd of nearly 100 students and faculty poured into the Annenberg School for Communication yesterday afternoon to hear Sergei Khrushchev discuss topics ranging from Russian President Boris Yeltsin to Russia's future and its Communist past. Khrushchev is the son of Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union from 1958 to 1964. "We're witnessing living history here," said Political Science graduate student Chris Harth, who serves as an assistant to Political Science Professor Karl Von Vorys. "This is the equivalent to talking to one of the Kennedys about what went on behind closed doors during the Cuban Missile Crisis." A senior visiting scholar at the Watson Institute's Center for Foreign Policy Development at Brown University, Khrushchev came to Penn as the first speaker in the annual Annenberg Public Policy Forum Series. Introduced to Khrushchev through a mutual friend several years ago, Von Vorys played an integral role in bringing the speaker to campus. Khrushchev spoke earlier in the day to Von Vorys's Political Science class. That session -- a reprise of one Khrushchev did last year for another of Von Vorys's classes -- was closed to the public and press. "The Annenberg session is much more general than the class session," Von Vorys said. "Both address perspectives of decision making and how national decision makers make foreign policy." Von Vorys called Khrushchev "a very good observer." "His father was the last of the Communists who could have saved the system," Von Vorys added. Author of Khrushchev on Khrushchev and Nikita Khrushchev, Crisis, and Missiles and editor of his father's memoirs, Khrushchev first addressed the differences between Russia and the United States. "Russia is behind the United States by a century-and-a-half," he said. "In America, society is based on laws agreed on by all. There is only one good thing about Russian laws -- nobody cares about them." After a brief speech, Khrushchev filled up the rest of the hour-long session by addressing questions from the audience. Khrushchev, who bears a striking resemblance to his father, talked about the practicality of Communism, calling it "a dream which belongs to history." Expressing disapproval of nearly every Soviet premier since V.I. Lenin, Khrushchev said former leaders' faults ranged from being indecisive to not addressing the needs of the people. But he saved his harshest criticism for current Russian President Boris Yeltsin. "Yeltsin can dance to a German orchestra, but even when he is not drunk, speaking is very complicated for him," Khrushchev said. "Yeltsin is doing nothing." He also spoke briefly about his father's role in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and regaled the audience with humorous anecdotes about his father's "kitchen debates" with then-Vice President Richard Nixon, garnering many laughs. "My father televised the whole discussion on Russian television. But in a supposedly open society, American television cut out my father speaking," Khrushchev said. "He enjoyed pointing that out to Nixon later." Communications Professor Phyllis Kaniss, director of Annenberg's Internships and Alumni Relations, helped to coordinate the discussion. "The goal of the Khrushchev visit was to give [Communications] students informal interaction with someone of international renown," Kaniss explained. "And I think it went very well."

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