Nikita Khrushchev: And the Creation of a Superpower

University Park, PA—New book offers a unique account of Cold War history during the Khrushchev era by one who witnessed it firsthand at his father's side

"A fascinating portrait of a man of immense vitality, a fervent Communist, convinced that the Soviet Union would surpass the US, and the process by which he began subconsciously to understand that the system itself did not work."—Kirkus Reviews

More is known about Nikita Khrushchev than about many former Soviet leaders, partly because of his own efforts to communicate through speeches, interviews, and memoirs. But as William Taubman points out in his Foreword, many questions remain unanswered. "How did Khrushchev manage not only to survive Stalin but to succeed him? What led him to denounce his former master [an event that some interpreters herald as the first act in the drama that led to the end of the USSR]? How could a man of minimal formal education direct the affairs of a vast intercontinental empire in the nuclear age? Why did Khrushchev's attempt to ease East-West tensions result in two of the worst crises of the Cold War in Berlin and Cuba? To resolve these and other contradictions, we need more than policy documents from archives and memoirs from associates. We need firsthand testimony by family members who knew Khrushchev best, especially by his only surviving son, Sergei, in whom he often confided."

In Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower by Sergei N. Khrushchev tells the story of how the Cold War happened in reality from the Russian side, not from the American side. Sergei was born in 1935 when his father was Moscow party chief. He accompanied his father on major foreign trips—to Great Britain in 1956, East Germany in 1958, the United States in 1959, Egypt in 1964, among many others. After he became a control systems engineer and went to work for leading Soviet missile designer Vladimir Chelomei, Sergei attended many meetings at which his father transacted business with key leaders in the Soviet defense establishment. He has received many awards and honors for his work in computer science, missile design, and space research. In 1991 he received an appointment to the Center for Foreign Policy Development of the Thomas J. Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, where he is today. He and his wife, Valentina Nikolayevna, applied for U.S. citizenship in 1999, an event widely covered in the media.