How old is Nikita Khrushchev's son Sergei Khrushchev. Wives and children of Nikita Khrushchev

August 27, 2016, 10:26 pm


We all remember famous photograph Nina Khrushcheva, wife of Nikita Khrushchev, with Jacqueline Kennedy.

Looking at this photo, only the lazy one didn’t kick Khrushchev’s wife. Of course, external comparison was far from being in her favor. Especially in comparison with fashion trendsetter Jacqueline Kennedy, who had all the leading designers of that time at her service. But, by the way, Nina Khrushcheva is wearing the same dress or suit. And here it looks more solid. It is clear that the fabric is not cheap, but the colors are disappointing.

We all know sad fate and Jacqueline, and her husbands, and her children. But we know practically nothing about Nina Khrushcheva, who remained in the shadow of her husband all her life, quietly and calmly taking care of the house and raising her children. Having accidentally stumbled upon an article in Ogonyok about the fate of the children of the first leaders of the USSR, I decided to trace the life and fate of Nina Khrushcheva and her children with Nikita Khrushchev.

Khrushchev - a rarity among members of the Politburo - was a father of many children, raising five children. As a very young man in Yuzovka (now Donetsk), he married Efrosinya Ivanovna Pisareva, a beautiful red-haired woman. She died in 1919 from typhus, leaving Nikita Sergeevich with two children - Yulia and Leonid. He married again to Nina Petrovna Kukharchuk, a calm woman with a strong character, who gave birth to three children - Rada, Sergei and Elena.

Elena was in poor health and died at the age of 35.

Leonid Khrushchev, a military pilot, died at the front.

Yulia Khrushcheva (1916-1981) - was married to the director of the Kyiv Opera, and was a chemist by profession.

Information about Rada and Sergei will be below.

A little about Nina Petrovna Khrushcheva, née Kukharchuk.

Nina Kukharchuk was born into a Ukrainian family in the village of Vasilev in the Kholm region, which at that time was part of Russian Empire. Her father, Pyotr Vasilyevich, was an ordinary peasant. Mother - Ekaterina Grigorievna Bondarchuk - also came from a simple peasant family.

Nina Kukharchuk met Nikita Khrushchev in 1922 in Yuzovka. There she worked as a teacher at the district party school. There they began to live virtually as a family. And they would register their marriage only after Khrushchev retired, in 1965.

When Nina Khrushcheva became the “first lady” of the state, she participated in Khrushchev’s foreign trips, met with top officials of other states and their wives, which was not accepted in the USSR before her. Nina Khrushcheva was fluent in Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and French languages. Wikipedia says she also studied English language, but the degree of proficiency in it is not indicated. But I found a photo in which John Kennedy says something to Nina Khrushcheva, and she smiles knowingly. So, it is possible that she spoke English quite well after all.

Nikita Sergeevich and Nina Petrovna were good parents, and they had happy family. Nina Petrovna survived Nikita Sergeevich (died in 1971) and daughter Elena. She lived at a state dacha in Zhukovka and had a pension of 200 rubles.

In the photo - Nina Khrushcheva with US President Dwight Eisenhower and his wife in the USA, 1959.

Photos from other events. In my opinion, she looks quite decent on them. No worse than others.

In the photo: The Khrushchev family in 1959, during a visit to the USA. From left to right - N. P. Khrushcheva, USSR Ambassador to the USA Mikhail Menshikov, Nelson Rockefeller, N. S. Khrushchev, Rada Khrushchev and Sergei Khrushchev.

Now a little about the two most famous children of the Khrushchevs: Rada and Sergei. They have achieved a lot in this life. There is no doubt that their parents gave them a good start. But, as we know, no parental status will help if the parents did not care for the child and if he does not have abilities. And Nina Khrushcheva, that same woman in a simple cotton dress, was able to raise worthy and good children.

Rada Khrushcheva(pictured right).

I listened to interviews with her several times. She was an intelligent and educated woman. She lived a decent life. She died this year at the age of 87.

Rada graduated from school with a gold medal in Kyiv. After graduating from school, she entered the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, and subsequently transferred to the established Faculty of Journalism, which she graduated in 1952. While studying, she met Alexei Adzhubey, whom she married in 1949. In this marriage she gave birth to three sons (Nikita, Alexei and Ivan). She and her husband maintained an excellent relationship while they were together. Alexey Ivanovich treated his wife kindly and tenderly.

Khrushchev's Rada always behaved modestly. No one would have thought that she was the daughter of the owner of the country. All her life she worked at the journal Science and Life, headed the department of biology and medicine, then became deputy editor-in-chief. Deciding that a journalistic education was not enough, she graduated from the Faculty of Biology of Moscow University.

In 1956, she was appointed deputy editor-in-chief of the magazine. During her work, the magazine became one of the best popular science magazines Soviet Union. After Khrushchev was removed from his post, her husband fell into disgrace and began working as a department editor in the magazine “Soviet Union”, as well as publishing in various publications under a pseudonym. Rada Adzhubey continued to work in the editorial office of the magazine until 2004.

True, for more than twenty years her name was not mentioned in the list of the editorial board of the magazine...

Sergei Khrushchev

Second child of Nina and Nikita Khrushchev A Soviet and Russian scientist, publicist, Doctor of Technical Sciences, professor, Hero of Socialist Labor.

In 1952 he graduated from Moscow school No. 110 with a gold medal, graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Vacuum Engineering and Special Instrumentation of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute with a degree in Automatic Control Systems. He worked at the Chelomey Design Bureau as deputy head of department, deputy director of the Institute of Electronic Control Machines (INEUM), deputy general director NPO "Electronmash"

When his father was fired, Sergei Nikitich Khrushchev also lost his favorite job. He did a great job - he persuaded his father to dictate his memoirs. Nikita Sergeevich's four-volume notes are an invaluable source on the history of the Fatherland.

In 1991, S. N. Khrushchev was invited to Brown University (USA) to lecture on history cold war, which he currently specializes in. Stayed on permanent residence in the USA, currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island, has Russian and American (since 1999) citizenship. He is a professor at the Thomas Watson Institute of International Studies at Brown University.

He published a number of his own books with memories of historical events, which he witnessed, and with his own balanced assessment of what was happening: “Pensioner of Union significance”, “Birth of a superpower”. In his works he adheres to a clear anti-Stalinist position. Currently working on books about “Khrushchev’s reforms.” Books translated to 12 foreign languages. One of the screenwriters of the film Gray wolves"(Mosfilm, 1993).

He is divorced from his first wife, Galina Shumova. The second wife, Valentina Nikolaevna Golenko, lives with Sergei Nikitich in the USA. The eldest son Nikita, a journalist and editor of Moscow News, died on February 22, 2007 in Moscow. Youngest son Sergey lives in Moscow.

Sergei Nikitich Khrushchev was born on July 2, 1935 in Moscow. At the age of 6 he suffered from tuberculosis hip joint, spent a year in a cast. In 1952 he graduated from Moscow school No. 110 with a gold medal. In 1958 he graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Vacuum Engineering and Special Instrumentation at Moscow Power Engineering Institute.

In 1958-1968 he worked at the Chelomey Design Bureau as deputy head of the department, developing projects for winged and ballistic missiles, participated in the creation of landing systems spaceships, Proton launch vehicle. Doctor of Technical Sciences. He was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, became a laureate of the Lenin Prize, and the Prize of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Member of a number of international academies.

Subsequently, he worked as Deputy Director of the Institute of Electronic Control Machines (INEUM), Deputy General Director of NPO Elektronmash. In Moscow he lived in Starokonyushenny Lane, then in a mansion on the Lenin Hills.

In 1991, S. N. Khrushchev was invited to Brown University (USA) to lecture on the history of the Cold War. Remained a permanent resident in the United States, currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and has Russian and American (since 1999) citizenship. He is a professor at the Thomas Watson Institute of International Studies at Brown University.

He is divorced from his first wife, Galina Shumova. The second wife, Valentina Nikolaevna Golenko, lives with Sergei Nikitich in the USA. The eldest son Nikita died on February 22, 2007 in Moscow. The youngest son Sergei lives in Moscow.

Publicistic activity

After the resignation of N.S. Khrushchev, he edited the book of his father’s memoirs and sent it for publication abroad. He was under surveillance by the special services.

Subsequently, he published a number of his own books with memoirs about the historical events that he witnessed, and with his own balanced assessment of what happened: “Pensioner of Union Significance”, “Birth of a Superpower”, “Son for Father”. In his works he adheres to a clear anti-Stalinist position. Currently working on books about Khrushchev's reforms. The books have been translated into 12 foreign languages. One of the screenwriters of the film "Gray Wolves" (Mosfilm, 1993).

Major works

  • Khrushchev S.N. Pensioner of Union significance. Publishing house "News", 1991. 416 pp. ISBN 5-7020-0095-1
  • Khrushchev S.N. The Birth of a Superpower: A Book about the Father. Ed. “Time”, 2003. 672 pp. ISBN 5-94117-097-1.
  • Sergei Khrushchev, Khrushchev on Khrushchev - An Inside Account of the Man and His Era, by His Son, Sergei Khrushchev, Verlag Little, Brown and Company, 1990, ISBN 0-316-49194-2
  • Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-271-01927-1
  • Sergei Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Reformer, 1945-1964, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006, ISBN 0-271-02861-0

Exactly 40 years ago, Nikita Khrushchev began dictating his memoirs.

“To Vagankovskoye - to Vysotsky, to Novodevichye - to Khrushchev!” - they invite tourists at Moscow train stations. Khrushchev’s daughter, Rada Nikitichna, who visits the grave more often than other relatives, sometimes finds modest flowers or easter eggs. So, they remember... He raised five children, participated in labor strikes in the Donbass, went through the civil and Great Patriotic Wars, put an end to the personality cult of Stalin, planted corn plantations, launched the first cosmonaut into orbit, bulldozed an art exhibition in the Manege, knocked with his own shoe on the UN podium, threatened the West with “Kuzka’s mother,” resettled people from basements and communal apartments in Khrushchev-era apartments, became the hero of many jokes, lived in isolation for the rest of his days, dictated two thousand pages of frank memoirs and died at a dacha near Moscow, forgotten by his party comrades. The day of Khrushchev’s funeral “accidentally” coincided with a sanitary day at the Novodevichy cemetery. There was no official farewell. Two days after his death, a modest, laconic obituary appeared in the newspaper. Here, in fact, are all the most significant and famous milestones in the biography of Nikita Khrushchev. The unknown remained in the memory of relatives and in the family legends of people who knew the head of the USSR personally. There are such people in Donbass, where Khrushchev spent his childhood and his party career began. They remember some things and invent others. For example, about how Khrushchev, already being the head of the USSR, visited his former workplace at the Donetsk machine plant, I saw a brand new vice and was indignant: they say, it’s not mine, I worked with the old ones, and it’s better to give the new ones to one of the workers. Or about the fact that Nikita Sergeevich had a daughter growing up in Donetsk, about whom he never told anyone, as well as about his repressed son Leonid. We talked about this and much more with Nikita Sergeevich’s son, Sergei Nikitovich.

“MOM WENT TO WORK BY TRAM. AND WHEN I WAS A STUDENT, I HAPPENED TO BE HANGING ON FOOTSTANDS.”

— In Donbass they remember Khrushchev, although there are almost no people alive who knew him personally. The children of his friends and party comrades remember, but the truth dissolves in time, rumors and legends remain. They say that Nikita Sergeevich had another daughter - from a woman named Marusya, with whom he was married for some time. Did your father tell you about this?

- Nikita Sergeevich married for the first time in 1912 to Efrosinia Pisareva. Five years later she died of typhus while her father was serving in the Red Army. He left two children in his arms - Leonid and Yulia. And in 1924, Nikita Sergeevich and my mother, Nina Petrovna Kukharchuk, became husband and wife. Many years later I found out that they were not painted. In those years this was not required. People simply lived together and raised children. If it came to divorce, the consent of the other party was not even necessary. The question of formalizing the marriage arose only after the resignation of Nikita Sergeevich, when it was necessary to register in the apartment. As for Marusya and her daughter, they told me about this when I was in Donetsk. But I myself don’t know anything and I think these are rumors. Nikita Sergeevich was a responsible person towards his family and would not forget about his daughter. By the way, we also learned many years later that Leonid and Yulia were born from their first marriage.

- Your parents might not have met. Nikita Sergeevich is a newcomer to Donbass, and Nina Petrovna ended up there by chance...

— My father was born in the village of Kalinovka, Kursk region. My grandfather went to Donbass to earn money and moved his family. My grandfather worked in a mine, and my father, from the age of 15, worked at the Yuzovsky machine-building plant of the Belgian industrialist Bosse, then he also moved to the mine. My mother is from Galicia; until 1939, all her relatives lived in Poland. During the First World War she was evacuated to Odessa. She joined the revolutionary movement, and in the 20s she accidentally ended up in the Donbass - she was traveling through these regions from Odessa to Moscow for courses and fell ill with typhus. Serafima Ilyinichna Gonner nursed my mother, in whose house the parents met. When they decided to get married, my father set one condition for my mother - that she quit smoking. He was generally a supporter healthy image life and before the revolution in Donbass, he was the chairman of the local temperance society. After many years the wife American Ambassador gave Nikita Sergeevich a “cunning” glass - ordinary in appearance, but holding only two millimeters of liquid. My father always took this glass with him and at receptions he only pretended to drink...

My sister Rada was born in Kyiv in 1929, I was born in 1935, Elena is two years younger than me. The children from his first marriage, Leonid and Yulia, lived with us, and Nikita Sergeevich’s parents too. When my father was transferred to Kyiv, he took my grandparents. The grandmother was buried in Kyiv at the Baikovo cemetery, her grave can still be found, it is well-groomed. In Moscow we had a large apartment in a building on Naberezhnaya. Until his death, my grandfather Sergei Gavrilovich lived with us. Our family was friendly. I can’t say that my father took care of us, checked notebooks or sat by the bed when we were sick, but he really appreciated the house and spent the evenings with us. We were lucky that after the war we for a long time lived in Kyiv, that is, away from Stalin. There was no night regime, when a person leaves for work at three in the morning and returns unknown when.

— In one of the interviews, Rada Nikitichna said that as a child you were bedridden due to illness. Did this last long?

— I had tuberculosis of the hip bursa. Not only I, but also my sister Yulia and my mother’s sister suffered from tuberculosis in the family. I really lay there for a whole year and started going to the evacuation. In my memory this event coincided with the victory in Battle of Stalingrad. Father was not with us then - we did not see him at all from 1941 to 1944. He moved with the troops from Stalingrad to Kyiv.

— Did your parents keep you strict?

“Mom was very strict, and father was a gentle person.” But we were afraid to bring back bad grades from school, primarily because we didn’t want to upset our father. Mom visited school and asked that they give me A’s less often. Honestly, I didn't count good student, and this is partly due to my mother. My father and I always went for walks together, and there was a special time for walks. We walked when I was a schoolboy, and at the institute, and when I was already working: we walked, talked, and this was our communication.

On weekends, guests came, and we also communicated with them all together. When there were youth parties at our house, there was no question of having alcohol on the table, and smoking was prohibited. Later, of course, I started smoking, then quit. But I didn't drink for a long time. I was already working at Chelomey’s missile design bureau, and when we were going to the test site, the guys at the stops bought “Red Torch” wine for me (it was also called “ink”), and that’s how I learned to drink.

— Your youth fell on the era of the dudes and the sixties. How did Nikita Sergeevich feel about your tastes?

- I was not a hipster. And I listened to Okudzhava’s songs, which I remember greatly surprised one of my friends: she was sure that the songs of such a free-thinking person as Okudzhava could not be heard in Khrushchev’s house.

— Is it true that Nina Petrovna went to work by tram? Or is this also a beautiful Soviet legend about the modesty of Khrushchev and his family members?

- No, not a legend. My mother and I rode the tram when I was a student. It also happened to hang on the steps.

— And Khrushchev’s children had no privileges...

- Telling fairy tales is stupid. Of course, the families of everyone who reached such a position as Khrushchev enjoyed privileges. But our main privilege was the prohibition to do this or that - “otherwise you will be like Vasya Stalin.”

“The BAN ON KHRUSHCHEV’S NAME WAS LIMITED IN THE EARLY 90’S”

— Were your parents also selecting candidates for the role of husbands and wives?

“They absolutely did not interfere in our personal lives. I remember how Rada (she studied at Moscow State University at the Faculty of Journalism) brought her future husband, Alexei Adzhubey, to Kyiv to introduce her to her parents. No one advised or forbade her anything.

- “Don’t have a hundred rubles, but marry like Adzhubey...” - one can only imagine how many envious people Alexei Ivanovich had and with what pleasure they rubbed their hands when, after Khrushchev’s resignation, Adzhubey was forced to leave the chair of editor-in-chief of Izvestia! Rada Nikitichna retained her position as editor of the journal Science and Life. But you also suffered for your name...

— This happened not immediately after Nikita Sergeevich’s resignation, but four years later. I worked for Chelomey, they called me and said: you will move from there to there. I moved to a research institute, where I worked with pleasure for 20 years without traveling to the test site. But then I was very offended and did not understand that this was a warning to my father, who at that time was already writing his memoirs: we need to be more accommodating.

— Was Nikita Sergeevich forbidden to write memoirs?

— My father began his memoirs in ’67. He did not write, but dictated into a tape recorder, which he called a “box,” and was very sorry that there was no interlocutor in front of him whom he could look into the eyes. One day Kirilenko called him and said that history should be written by the Central Committee, not individual people, and demanded that he hand over the materials to the Central Committee and stop dictating. Khrushchev responded: “This is a violation of human rights. I know of only one case - when the tsar forbade Shevchenko to write and draw. You can take everything away from me, deprive me of everything, I can go to work - I haven’t forgotten plumbing yet, and if I can’t do this, then people will always help me. But they won’t serve it to you.”

After his resignation, none of the people close to the authorities came to Nikita Sergeevich’s dacha. Except that Mikoyan called once. Our friends also visited, Pyotr Yakir, Roman Karmen, Evgeny Yevtushenko came. There was a rest house next to the dacha, and from there people came to it in droves. My father enjoyed gardening, growing tomatoes weighing a kilogram each, and making his own irrigation system. But for three years, from 1967 to 1970, he dictated his memoirs - almost 400 pages of printed text.

When he had a heart attack, the KGB took away the materials. But we managed to make a copy and sent it abroad. In 1971, the book “Khrushchev Remembers” was published in the USA. But even decades later, no one in the Central Committee took an interest in what Khrushchev dictated. Didn't print it, didn't look at it. The book was translated for a limited circle. They were interested not in what Khrushchev said, but in what was published in America - whether there was anything there about the people who are now in power. Memoirs begin in 1929 and end with the death of Stalin and the arrest of Beria. Nikita Sergeevich believed that this was the most important period, and that what he did himself was supposedly of no interest to anyone.

The ban on Khrushchev's name was lifted only in the early 90s. His memories were published in five issues of Ogonyok magazine. Then publications were banned by people from the Central Committee, but editor-in-chief magazine, Vitaly Korotich, at his own peril and risk, published four more issues with memoirs. Finally called important person from the Central Committee and read out Medvedev’s resolution: “No Khrushchev. Medvedev." After my father's death, I began performing, trying to restore his name.

— The memoirs are largely dedicated to Stalin. Nikita Sergeevich recalls that he personally called him to save Maxim Rylsky from arrest when he was accused of Ukrainian nationalism. But on the documents related to the repressions, among others, there was Khrushchev’s signature...

— At that time it was impossible not to sign. He believed that everyone was involved in the repression and everyone should be held accountable. I was ready to answer if called upon. The main thing was to put an end to all the horrors that happened then. It was a life that was completely incomprehensible to us.

— Is it true that the repressions did not spare your family?

— My brother Leonid’s wife, Lyubov Illarionovna, was arrested for connections with either French or Swedish intelligence. She was not a spy, but just a sociable woman. She returned from exile in Karaganda only after 1956. She still lives in Kyiv. But if you mean the story with my brother Leonid, then this is all untrue. For a long time, I myself believed that he had shot himself during the war with some sailor and was sent to a penal battalion for this, and that his plane was shot down over the territory of Belarus occupied by the Germans, and, perhaps, Leonid was captured. The only truth is that he died.

In 1963, Nikita Sergeevich, when he was still in power, asked to find the planes shot down in that battle - there were over 30 of them. But before my father’s resignation, they didn’t have time to lift all the planes, and then, when he was removed from power, no one was doing this anymore. About seven years ago, newspaper publications appeared that local residents had raised a car, next to which they found a uniform jacket and helmet, and that it seemed to be Leonid Khrushchev’s plane. But his son, Yuri, did not find any documentary evidence of this. The fuselage of the plane had rotted, and it was still necessary to find the engine numbers. But the fact that Leonid died there is known for sure, and this is beyond doubt among anyone except the Stalinists.

- So, there was no target bottle and no penal battalion?

- No. He came up with this legend himself. There was such a historian Kolesnik - he unearthed how everything really happened. Leonid was flying a bomber and was wounded in the leg. The leg turned out to be broken, they wanted to amputate it because they were afraid of gangrene, but Leonid, threatening the surgeon with a pistol, forbade this to happen. The leg was left, and the gangrene passed. But he had to stay in the hospital for a long time. It was in Kuibyshev, at the same time he gave performances there Bolshoi Theater. Leonid walked with a cane and, like all pilots, was very attractive. In general, he met a ballerina from the Bolshoi, and they had a whirlwind romance.

Leonid, in the heat of passion, promised that he would divorce his wife and they would get married, but the ballerina did not forget this. She returned to Moscow and began to tell everyone that she was marrying Khrushchev’s son. The rumor also reached Stepan Mikoyan, who was friends with our family. Leonid was afraid that our mother, Nina Petrovna, would find out about everything - he was more afraid of her than of the German Messerschmidts (he was not constancy in his relationships with women, and my mother did not like it). Then Leonid had to write a letter to the ballerina and come up with the idea that something like this had happened. terrible story with the penal battalion and that they will no longer be able to see each other. So he had no criminal record, and this is confirmed by documented responses from the military prosecutor’s office.

“THE FATHER WAS VERY WORRIED WHEN THEY BEGAN TO SILENCE HIS MERIT IN THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR”

“But this story resonated with those who, after the end of the war, were looking for all sorts of reasons to discredit the name of Khrushchev.

“When his merits in the Great Patriotic War began to be hushed up, my father was very worried. Army commander Batov said: “I don’t know at all about Stalin or Khrushchev - where they were.” Nikita Sergeevich was worried: “How can this be? We fought with Comrade Batov in Stalingrad, on Kursk Bulge, and suddenly he lost his memory? Of course, it was very disappointing. But my father was a strong man. He said: “Everything will change.” Although this hurt him much more than the fact that Brezhnev did not mention, for example, his role in raising virgin soil. Then they tried to erase the name of Khrushchev from history. Brezhnev even ordered the Crimean village called Nikita to be renamed Botanichesky - it is still called that, although it has nothing to do with Khrushchev. I was told that after Nikita Sergeevich’s resignation, Brezhnev basically never appeared in Kursk, Khrushchev’s homeland, even though he lived there at one time.

— Sergei Nikitovich, you are a US citizen, and this is a separate topic - how and why this happened. But your first trip to this country happened in 1959, when Nikita Sergeevich took you, Rada, and Nina Petrovna. You have never been abroad before. Did a revolution take place in your consciousness then?

- All this is described in my books. Something surprised me, but even then we did not live in closed society, read about America, knew a lot.

— You probably carefully prepared for the trip, sewing suits and outfits?

- No, clothes were not previously given the same importance as they are now. Mom didn’t sew any special outfits, but my father had a dark suit made. Usually he wore a gray suit (black was not accepted). When Rockefeller was introduced to my father, he was amazed: “Wow, he looks just like us.” And I even wanted to touch it.

— Since we are already talking about clothes... In 1941, at the May Day demonstration in Kyiv, Khrushchev, being the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, stood on the podium in an altered coat. I also read that Mikoyan’s wife brought her husband’s suits to the studio for alteration. Was such demonstrative modesty in fashion?

“Of course, I don’t remember what my father was wearing then: I was too young.” But I fully admit that this was so. At that time everyone dressed modestly. And my mother was a very thrifty woman. So the re-faced coat doesn’t surprise me.

— Did you dare to argue with Nikita Sergeevich? Was it possible to convince him of something?

“I never objected to my father in public.” But at home he could be trying to prove something to him. Sometimes they argued desperately—for example, about Academician Lysenko. I argued that genetics exists, and he was amazed that I, an engineer, did not understand that this could not be. My father told me then: “Get out of the house!” But I stayed, and during the night he left. My father, of course, was pleased that I was an engineer working on rockets. He himself did not finish his studies either at the workers' faculty or at the Industrial Academy (by the way, Stalin's wife Svetlana Alliluyeva studied in the same group with him, and it was she who introduced Khrushchev to her husband). Probably my father was interested in me. After his resignation, we often went for walks and talked a lot. My sisters were even jealous of me.

- What about corn? Did you realize that this is an inflection point?

“The Americans don’t understand why the dolls with the image of Nikita Sergeevich have corn on them and not a rocket. For them, Khrushchev is a man who achieved strategic recognition from the West. In the US they take it very seriously. And corn was needed to feed the cattle; there was nowhere to get feed grain. But Nikita Sergeevich sincerely believed that we had wonderful life, much better than in the USA. And he didn’t intend to fight - he wanted to invest money in the economy and in agriculture. They understood each other well with the then American President Eisenhower and even thought together about what to do with the military, who both in the USSR and the USA were constantly asking for money for weapons. As for corn, with the light hand of Khrushchev, corn spread throughout Germany and Finland throughout Europe.

“NO ONE SAW HOW FATHER KNOCKED HIS BOOE”

- And this story with the shoe at the UN? You think that the journalists inflated it...

“No one saw him knock his shoe.” A regular meeting was going on, journalists surrounded Nikita Sergeevich, someone stepped on his foot, and the shoe fell off his foot. The father was a plump man and did not bend over. He placed the shoe next to him on the table. Then he intervened in the discussion and began waving his shoe to attract attention.

— And when the scandal happened in the Manege, did you also try to explain something to him?

“I didn’t try then.” You know, when something is persistently blown into a person’s ears, it’s hard not to hear it. There were people around him who began to convince Nikita Sergeevich that cultural figures were conductors of bourgeois ideology, that hostile works were exhibited in the Manege. The father was simply framed. And this is not just my opinion... Ernst Neizvestny also believes that Manege turned out to be a pure provocation.

- And this is all about him... Khrushchev could crush paintings with bulldozers, listen to bird trills and even write them on magnetic tape. By the way, recordings of bird voices are preserved in your family archive?

“These notes were taken away from us along with Nikita Sergeevich’s memoirs. And I remember how in 1946 he brought a recording device from Germany and he and the security guard recorded sparrow voices. And then my father said that we need to record how the nightingales sing. He gave the films to friends, so maybe some of them still have them.

- Romantic! Gagarin's flight became a holiday, probably not only because it was an outstanding technical achievement...

- Yes, Nikita Sergeevich wanted this day to become a universal holiday. He hit the nail on the head. When we met Gagarin and they were driving together in a car, all of Moscow came out. The weather was so sunny, people were hanging in the windows, shouting: “Give me the moon! We're in space!" This was the first time such rejoicing had occurred since Victory Day.

— The fateful report for the country “On the Cult of Personality” could not be born in one day. Surely Nikita Sergeevich spent a long time thinking about it and getting ready. It’s impossible that the family didn’t know anything about this.

“It turned out to be a shock.” For me, as for everyone, Stalin was the leader of the peoples. Of course, people had different attitudes to this report, but no one discussed this in my presence. When Stalin was alive, it was simply dangerous to talk about him, but even after the death of the leader there were no conversations in the house, even when the report “On the Cult of Personality” was being prepared. So it came as a complete surprise to me.

— From every trip abroad Nikita Sergeevich brought some ideas. Once, they say, I saw somewhere lights directed not upward, as was the case in the USSR, but downward, illuminating the sidewalk and road.

- Yes, he found these lanterns in Scandinavia. He came and scolded the first secretary of the Moscow city party committee, Nikolai Yegorychev, for not having thought of such a simple thing. In the USA, he paid attention to self-service stores, prototypes of supermarkets. Soon the first supermarket opened in Moscow on Suvorovsky Boulevard.

In the USA, Nikita Sergeevich was received by IBM President Watson Sr. and showed him a cafeteria with a self-service system. After a while, the same ones appeared in our USSR. And fate brought me together with Watson Sr. later again - I work at Brown University, which he founded. Even then, my father argued that our computers were better than American ones, but Watson politely disagreed with him.

— Sergei Nikitovich, in the country with which the USSR under Khrushchev was in a state of “cold war”, were you received warmly and for a long time?

“I didn’t intend to stay in the USA forever. I was invited by Watson Jr. to lead a project related to the lessons of the Cuban missile crisis. The contract was for three years, and this period seemed terribly long to me. I didn’t know English well, I only remembered my mother’s lessons and something else stuck in my memory from childhood. When I came to America, I was sent to give a lecture in Seattle about what was happening in Russia after the coup. I asked: “Who will translate?” They answered me: “No one translates in America. This is a country of foreigners. We don’t care about any accent.” So from a rocket scientist I became a political scientist.

— And Richard Nixon helped you settle in the USA...

“It’s a big word – settle down.” To obtain a green card, recommendations were needed from people respected in the United States. They were given to me by Nixon, former US Secretary of Defense McNamarra, Watson Jr. and Professor Taubman, with whom we had previously traveled to the places of Nikita Sergeevich (we were also in Donetsk, by the way) when Bill was writing a book about him. I took American citizenship and there was an uproar. But why? If Thatcher's son lives in Texas, it won't surprise anyone. It is not clear why Khrushchev’s son cannot live in another country. I am a citizen of Russia and the USA, I have two passports... And this is what interesting fact: Despite my citizenship, of the entire American delegation that went to Havana for the conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis, Fidel Castro, who was once such friends with his father, was the only one who did not give a Cuban visa to me.

“IN THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA, A WRINKEN OLD LADY APPROACHED ME AND SAID SHE WAS NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV’S TEACHER”

— Does anyone from the Khrushchev family still live in the USA?

— Great-granddaughter Nina, granddaughter of the deceased Leonid, she teaches questions international relations V New school New York. The rest live in Moscow. Sisters Yulia and Elena had no children, Rada had three, and neither did I. One of my sons, the namesake of Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, recently passed away.

— He wasn’t even 50, it seems. Was he seriously ill?

— He had prerequisites for ill health — overweight and other problems. Nikita worked in the editorial office of Moscow News for 16 years, but this year his contract was not renewed. He took it hard. Nikita did not leave me any grandchildren, he was never even married, he lived with his mother.

— Do you miss Russia?

- More no than yes. This is already a different country.

— Do you think Nikita Sergeevich could govern today’s country?

“I think if he had been eternal and had carried his reforms to this day, we would all have lived happily and better than the Americans.”

- And Putin - would he have the courage, like Khrushchev, to debunk the cult of Stalin?

- Of course not. I think Putin is a Stalinist at heart, and this is not surprising, because he is a man from the authorities. There is nothing you can do - each time has its own “vegetable”.

—Are you comfortable in America?

— I just live - I teach, I lecture, I write books about my father and about that time. “Pensioner of Union Importance”, “Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower” have been published, and I am currently working on the book “The Reformer”. This will be a trilogy about my father. I am writing with pleasure, but very slowly - I have become old. I used to be able to write 30 pages a day, but now it’s much less.

— Your phone number is easy to find in the telephone directory. Probably the address too. People call you, write to you from former USSR?

- Very rarely. But I get something. Once from Donetsk, a person sent Nikita Sergeevich’s badge, which he used to walk through the factory entrance. The relic was kept in the Khrushchev Museum, which was in his house. But when the museum was liquidated under Brezhnev, this man saved the token. Another Donetsk resident, Viktor Lappo, wrote that he was in charge of the club where Nikita Sergeevich’s portrait hung, and he also saved it and wants to give it to me. But we haven’t taken it yet, because, as it turned out, taking a painting from Ukraine to Russia is a big problem. And once, when I was performing at North Carolina State, a wizened old woman came up to me and said that she was Nikita Sergeevich’s teacher. So it's a small world.

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Under the leadership of the Bolsheviks and Soviet leaders, the country took leaps and bounds towards a bright communist future - not for itself (they didn’t dream of it), for its children and grandchildren. But the descendants of these leaders, who proposed that everyone sacrifice themselves for the sake of future generations, prefer to live and live in the West (in “decaying” Europe and “damned” America).

The main figure in this epic, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, had no children. But look at the geography of settlement of the scions of the Bolshevik-communist elite, including also the contemporaries of the post-Soviet society, the families of current deputies and ministers.

After the collapse of the communist experiment, the descendants of its builders did not go to complete the implementation Great Dream to China, North Korea or Cuba. They all moved to normal countries, the EU and the USA.

Stalin's son Vasily died at the age of 40. Daughter Svetlana, in 1966 in friendly India, came to the American embassy and asked for political asylum. In 1970, she married an American and changed her name to Lana Peters. Chris Evans gave birth to a daughter.

In 1984, she came to the USSR and restored Soviet citizenship, but 2 years later she renounced it for the second time and returned to the USA. The older children, son and daughter, whom she abandoned in the USSR after her escape, never found a common language with their mother.

In 2008, in one of her rare television interviews with a Russian journalist, Svetlana refused to speak Russian, citing the fact that she is not Russian: her father is Georgian, and her mother is half German, half Gypsy. She died in 2011 in the USA, her body was cremated. It is unknown where the ashes of Stalin's only daughter are buried. Stalin's granddaughter Chris Evans lives in the USA, does not understand Russian and works in a clothing store.

Stalin's granddaughter - Chris Evans. She is 40 years old, lives in Portland, and owns a vintage store.

The son of Nikita Khrushchev, Sergei Khrushchev, was awarded the Star of the Hero of Socialist Labor and the title of Lenin Prize laureate, has lived in the USA since 1991, and received American citizenship.

America also became a home for Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev through his eldest son Leonid, the circumstances of whose death historians still argue about.

Son former first Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev - Sergei Nikitich Khrushchev went to Brown University (USA) in 1991 to lecture on the history of the Cold War, in which he now specializes. Remained a permanent resident in the United States, currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and has American citizenship. He is a professor at the Thomas Watson Institute of International Studies at Brown University.

Nikita Sergeevich’s great-granddaughter, Nina Lvovna Khrushcheva, teaches at the Faculty of International Relations at New School University in New York.

Choreography teacher in Miami, granddaughter of the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR and General Secretary of the CPSU Yuri Andropov - Tatyana Igorevna Andropova. Her brother, Konstantin Igorevich Andropov, lives there in the USA.

The great-grandsons of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev on his son’s side, Dmitry Andreevich and Leonid Andreevich, graduated from Oxford University.

The niece of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, Lyubov Yakovlevna Brezhneva, lives in California.

The daughter of the main ideologist of late communism, the ascetic Mikhail Suslov, Maya Mikhailovna Sumarokova, has lived in Austria with her husband and two sons since 1990.

Gorbachev's daughter, Irina Virganskaya, lives mainly in San Francisco, where the main office of the Gorbachev Foundation is located, where she is vice president.

Irina Virganskaya admitted in an interview that she could easily imagine herself outside of Russia. She often travels around the world. The German press wrote that former president The USSR has a castle in the Bavarian Alps (he himself denies this). Mikhail Sergeevich’s eldest granddaughter, Ksenia Pyrchenko (Virganskaya), lives in Germany. “I have many friends in Berlin, and I feel free in Germany,” she told a German journalist.

As we see, all the children of the leaders of the USSR chose to live abroad. None of them lives in the house that they built (their fathers and grandfathers built it). Apparently they built this house for us, and not for themselves. This is such a “communist paradise” from which everyone is leaving.

Why did Nikita Sergeevich want to take revenge on Stalin?

The cult was debunked at the 20th Congress of the CPSU Joseph Stalin. It was initiated by Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev- the then leader of the Soviet Union. Until now, historians and politicians have not stopped arguing: why did Khrushchev need this? Stalin was no longer alive. And this kind of exposure could well make Khrushchev the enemy of many influential people. One of the versions sounded completely unexpected: the secretary general was taking revenge on the deceased leader of the peoples for the death of his eldest son.

Two leaders - two sons

Stalin had two sons. One of them is Yakov- died during the Great Patriotic War. Everything indicates that his death in the concentration camp was dignified; there are some disagreements among witnesses only in minor details.

Khrushchev also had two sons. And one of them is Leonid- also died in the war. Only with his death everything is not as clear as in the case of Yakov Dzhugashvili. Either he is a hero who saved the commander at the cost of his life, or a war criminal who collaborated with the Germans. One thing is clear: the story with Khrushchev’s son became the reason for Nikita Sergeevich’s fierce hatred of the Generalissimo.

A brave warrior and a cheerful reveler

The eldest son of Nikita Khrushchev was born on November 10, 1917. In 1939 it began military service Leonid Khrushchev. He became a pilot, bombed enemy positions during Finnish war. In 1941 he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. And almost immediately Leonid ended up in the hospital - the Germans shot down his plane.

During treatment, Khrushchev Jr. did not lose heart - the entire hospital knew him as a cheerful reveler and reveler, capable of the most daring pranks and desperate antics. One of these pranks, they say, ended badly - Khrushchev tried (of course, after copious libations) to shoot a bottle off the head of a military sailor. And, as they said, he killed him.

Version one - heroic

Stepan Mikoyan- a friend of Leonid Khrushchev - claimed that Leonid was convicted for the murder of the sailor. He was sentenced to eight years, allowing part of the term to be served as a military pilot at the front. In the spring of 1943, Senior Lieutenant Khrushchev’s vehicle did not return from a combat mission.

This version was confirmed by another of Leonid’s comrades, the pilot Zamorin, who was flying at the same time on another plane and said that Khrushchev, saving a comrade, sent his plane into the fire salvo of an enemy vehicle, taking fire on himself and dying in the plane that crumbled into pieces.

It would seem that glory and honor go to the fallen hero. But neither the wreckage of the fighter nor the remains of Leonid himself or his passenger could be found. If you consider that the passenger was the son of the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, then you can imagine how diligently they searched for what was left of the disaster. They found absolutely nothing.

Version two is treacherous

According to this version, the downed pilot Leonid Khrushchev was captured by the Germans and quite quickly began to cooperate with them. The leadership of SMERSH, following Stalin's orders, sent a group to capture the traitor. Leonid Khrushchev was taken to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. Khrushchev Sr., who was at the front at that time, learned about this and hastily flew to Moscow. A counterintelligence officer wrote about the successful operation to deliver the traitor to his homeland - V. Udilov.

According to the KGB general M. Dokuchaeva, Nikita Khrushchev literally lay at Stalin’s feet, begging him not to shoot his son. He admitted that Leonid was very guilty, but asked that he be punished in any way, just spare his life. Stalin responded to this: “I can’t help you with anything.” Khrushchev began to sob, knelt down, crawled to Stalin’s feet, he was confused, called security, then the doctors appeared. They tried to bring Khrushchev to his senses, but he did not calm down and kept repeating: “Have mercy... Don’t shoot...”

Who to believe?

Third wife of Nikita Sergeevich, Nina, mentioned more than once that Leonid Khrushchev did not die like a hero. These words sounded from the lips Molotov. But the “heroic” version was always supported by Khrushchev’s relatives. Western historians They also spread the opinion in every possible way that Leonid Khrushchev died in a fair battle. Apparently, they needed this in order to under no circumstances allow the slightest shadow on the bright image of Nikita Khrushchev - the man who overthrew Stalinism. In any case, this explanation seems quite logical.

And who takes opposing positions, who emphasizes in every possible way that Khrushchev Jr. stained himself with betrayal and was shot in Stalin’s dungeons? First of all - Sergo Beria, son Lawrence Beria. Then - Dmitry Yazov, former Minister of Defense of the Soviet Union. Next - Vladimir Karpov, famous historical writer. Nikolay Dobryukha, a Russian publicist, is convinced: it was precisely that very meeting between Nikita Khrushchev and Joseph Stalin, when the first, according to rumors, crawled on his knees, begging to save his son, and the second coldly refused, and became the reason for Khrushchev’s fierce hatred of the Generalissimo. It is from here that the debunking of Stalin's personality cult originates - and after the death of the leader, Khrushchev did not forgive him and did everything possible to tarnish his name before his descendants.


They say many have heard careless words Khrushchev - he said something like this: “ Lenin I avenged my brother on the Tsar, and I will avenge my son on Stalin. Even if it’s dead!”

Father's verdict

Now, probably, it is hardly possible to say with complete confidence which version is true. But there are facts that make you think.

Nikita Khrushchev, already the Secretary General of the USSR, never made an attempt to rehabilitate Leonid, although, it would seem, he should have tried with all his might to remove the shameful stain from his son’s name.

One more fact. After Leonid Khrushchev disappeared - either died or was arrested - his wife was arrested I love you. Relatives claim that she is an employee of foreign intelligence. In fact, the documents have a different wording - she was imprisoned as a member of the family of a traitor to the Motherland, and with this wording during the war, only relatives of traitors who agreed to work for the Germans were imprisoned.

Lyuba was released only after the war - in the 50s, and Nikita Khrushchev showed absolutely no interest in her fate. He simply crossed out his daughter-in-law from his life. Strange? No, it’s quite understandable, if you believe the statement of Molotov, who claimed that after the execution of Leonid Khrushchev, his father renounced him, and publicly.

On the other side of the scale is only the testimony of the pilot Zamorin about the heroic death of Leonid. But this evidence, as many historians believe, is quite likely false. It still needs to be examined. When this is done - perhaps in national history There will be another debunking.



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