Warm Sentiment, Cold Shadow

Sergei Khrushchev, son of the late Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, has very warm sentiments for the U.S., for someone whose father vehemently endorsed Cold War politics. He and his wife Valentina are expected to interview with the Immigration and Naturalization Service next month in their endeavor to become American citizens.

The 63-year-old son of the late proletarian ruler lives in Cranston, R.I., right outside of Providence. Once a rocket engineer and computer scientist who headed the Soviet Missile Design Bureau, Khrushchev has been a senior researcher and lecturer for the Foreign Policy Development at Brown University since 1991.

He and his wife moved from Moscow to Rhode Island almost eight years ago. When confronted with the idea of what his father would think about his citizenship plans, Khrushchev takes it lightly. "When I see him I will ask him," he says jokingly. "You can not move a historical figure from one time to another. It's like asking George Washington what he thinks of the Persian Gulf War. The Cold War is finished."

Nikita Khrushchev died in September 1971, having ruled the Soviet Union from 1953 until he was deposed in 1964. He once angrily told Americans, "We will bury you." According to Sergei, his father was referring to "a socialist centralized economic system, which he believed would prevail and be more effective than a free-market system."

Over the years, Khrushchev has written several articles and books about his father. He says that he has just completed a 3,500-page, four-volume memoir to be edited and published in Moscow.