Last week Stephen Wheatcroft conducted a masterclass on Soviet Economic History with staff and postgraduate students at Nottingham University on Monday November 5th, and spoke at the launch of Volume 7, The Industrialisation of Russia 1937-9 with Mark Harrison (Warwick University) one of his co-authors, at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham. This week and the next two weeks he will be working in the Russian Archives in Moscow, but next week this weill be combined with a series of public lectures and conferences. Together with Cormac O’Grada (Trinity College Dublin) they will be the main speakers at the Conference on the Russian Famine of 1932/3 held by the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences on Wednesday November 21st. On Thursday November 22 he will give a lecture on comparative Russian famines to the Russian State Academy University of the Humanities, which is a new University attached to the Russian Academy of Sciences. On Friday November 23 he will give a seminar to the Economic History Sector of Moscow State University (MGU the top ranked and oldest Russian University) on Soviet economic history in the late 1930s. On Monday November 24th he will give a seminar to a combined group of Demographers and Economic Historians on Soviet Agricultural and demographic developments 1937-39 at the Higher School for Economics (HSE is a relatively new university, but is currently ranked 2nd in Russia in general, and top in Economics and Demography). He will continue to work in the Russian archives for the rest of the week, before returning to Melbourne in early December.