How was the life of the youngest son of Nikita Khrushchev, who emigrated to the USA

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Sergey Nikitovich Khrushchev always spoke with deep respect about his father at all levels. He sincerely believed that during the reign of Nikita Khrushchev, people in the Soviet Union began to live better and much freer. Sergei Nikitovich himself was invariably called the worthy son of his father, who never denigrated his surname and achieved outstanding success in science. True, his tragic departure in June 2020 raises more questions than answers.

Brilliant career

Sergei Khrushchev was born in 1935 in the marriage of Nikita Sergeevich with Nina Petrovna Kukharchuk. Since childhood, he delighted his parents with his academic success, he studied very diligently, as a result of which he graduated from school with a gold medal.

After that, Sergei Khrushchev easily entered the Moscow Power Engineering Institute, where he studied at the Faculty of Electrovacuum Engineering and Special Instrumentation.

After receiving his diploma, he began work in one of the leading rocket and space organizations of the USSR - the Chelomey Design Bureau, where he served for ten years, immediately taking the position of deputy head of the department. Being engaged in the development of projects for cruise and ballistic missiles, as part of a design group, he became a laureate of the Lenin Prize, and later received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. Then his career went only upward and even his father's resignation did not affect this in any way.

Departure for the USA

In the late 1980s, Sergei Khrushchev held the position of Deputy Director of the Institute of Electronic Control Machines and at the same time began to study political science. In 1990, he received an invitation from Thomas John Watson Jr., who was the US ambassador to the USSR, and later provided financial support for the creation of the Institute for International Studies, which studied aspects of the Cold War.

When Sergei Khrushchev spoke to the directors of the Watson Institute during his visit to the Kennedy School at Harvard, his speech was so pleased that he was offered a three-year contract. But Sergei Nikitovich agreed to sign a contract for a year. He left for work in September 1991 and began lecturing on the history of the Cold War.

Together with Sergei Khrushchev, his wife, Valentina Golenko, went to the United States, and sons Nikita and Sergei remained in Moscow. When the term of the contract came to an end, Sergey Nikitovich had nowhere to return: the institute in which he worked before leaving had actually collapsed, and most of his former subordinates had already moved to other countries, including the United States.

The contract was renewed for him as soon as he expressed a desire to continue working further. In 1999, he accepted American citizenship without renouncing Russian. Shortly before that, he suggested that his wife return home, but both of them already understood: they had nothing in their homeland. All their savings have been burned out, there is no work, the children have been living their lives for a long time.

And the couple eventually acquired a modest house in a green area, settled down. They flew to Moscow several times a year to visit friends, children and grandchildren.

When asked how his father would react to his emigration, Sergei Nikitovich replied: you cannot transfer a historical person to another time. Times have changed and relations between the two countries have changed. In these realities, Nikita Khrushchev could well approve of the choice of his son.

Living in the proposed circumstances

Sergey Khrushchev admitted in his interviews: he liked living in Providence, Rhode Island. The climate and the surrounding nature were quite satisfactory for him, a modest one-story house made it possible to exist quite comfortably. On their plot, he and his wife set up a small pond with fish, laid out flower beds and felt very good.

Moreover, children from time to time flew to them in America. They did not even intend to move at all, because in Russia each of the sons had a job, and in the USA they would have to start everything from scratch. In 2007, the couple went through the greatest tragedy together: the eldest son of Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita, a journalist and editor who served in the Moscow News newspaper, died.

The youngest, Sergey, is still engaged in business, works in the field of automated systems, and lives in Moscow.

Mysterious departure

Several years ago, Sergei Nikitovich left teaching and retired. He almost never went out, preferred to communicate only with neighbors, and even then not too often.

On June 18, 2020, Sergei Nikitovich died, and the details of his death seem not entirely ordinary. According to the head of the public relations department of the police department, Todd Patalano, the police received a call about Sergei Khrushchev receiving a gunshot wound to the head. Leaving the address, the police found that Sergei Khrushchev had died.

The fact of the gunshot wound was confirmed by the public relations officer of the Department of Health Joseph Wendelken. But Valentina Golenko, the widow of Sergei Khrushchev, said that he "died of old age."

Todd Patalano later announced the completion of the investigation into the Khrushchev case and noted that no violent actions had been taken against Sergei Khrushchev by third parties, which means that no charges would be brought forward. The son of Nikita Khrushchev did not live to see his 85th birthday for only two weeks.

For some, the period of Khrushchev's rule is the Thaw, the resettlement of communal apartments and flights into space. For some - the shooting of workers in Novocherkassk, the destruction of agriculture and persecution of the priesthood. In any case, it was a bright period of Soviet and Russian history, and it left a big mark after itself - including in our language.