Sergei Khrushchev, the son of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, has died in the United States, where he had lived for almost three decades.
Nikita Khrushchev's great-granddaughter, Nina Khrushcheva, told RFE/RL on June 19 that the former professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, died the day before at the age of 84.
She gave no further details.
Sergei Khrushchev graduated from the Moscow Energy Institute in 1958, after which he worked at the Vladimir Chelomei rocket-design bureau, where he was involved in the development of ballistic missiles and spacecraft.
He received various awards for his work in the Soviet Union, including the Medal of the Labor Hero, the Order of Lenin, the Lenin Prize and the Prize of the Soviet Union's Council of Ministers.
Before leaving Russia for the United States in 1991, he was a teacher at the oldest and largest Russian technical school -- the Bauman Moscow State Technical University.
Khrushchev became a U.S. citizen in 1999. He always maintained that he did not defect from the Soviet Union as the two countries were "no longer enemies."
While in the United States, he taught political science and modern history at the Watson Institute for International Relations at Brown University.
His older half-brother, Leonid Khrushchev, died during World War II at the age of 25.
