Sergei Khruschev

Sergei Khruschev, of Cranston, R.I.; June 18. He was a retired senior fellow at the Watson Institute, the son of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and a rocket engineer and computer scientist who developed guidance systems for rockets and cruise missiles. As a rocket engineer and computer scientist in the Soviet Union, he played an active role in developing guidance systems for missiles, including cruise missiles launched from submarines from 1958 to 1968. He then took up writing and lecturing. His areas of expertise included Soviet economic and political reforms, U.S./Soviet relations from 1950 to 1964, and the history of the Soviet space program. In addition, he helped his father write his four-volume memoir in Russian and then translated it into English. He moved to Rhode Island in 1991, shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, to lecture at Brown as a visiting scholar on the Cold War. He remained a senior fellow at the Thomas J. Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and a fellow at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He also taught at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. While at the Watson Institute, he taught, lectured extensively around the country, and wrote three books about his father and the Cold War. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1999, though he also maintained his Russian citizenship. He is survived by his wife, Valentina; a son; and a granddaughter.