Guidance Engineer Sergei Khrushchev

Abstract

Sergei Nikitich Khrushchev was born on July 2, 1935, in Moscow. He is the son of the Soviet leader Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev. In 1958 he graduated from the Moscow Power Institute as an engineer specializing in electrical vacuum technology and special equipment. From 1958 to 1968 he worked at the Joint Design Bureau No. 52 (OKB-52), led by General Designer Vladimir Chelomey.¹ As deputy department chief, Sergei Khrushchev worked on guidance systems for ballistic and cruise missiles, military and research spacecraft, moon vehicles, and the Proton booster rocket. He earned his candidate degree from the Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School and his doctoral degree from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. In the period between 1968 and 1991, he worked as department head, deputy director of the Control Computer Institute and deputy general director of the Elektronmash Scientific-Production Association. Sergei Khrushchev was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor and became the laureate of the Lenin Prize and of the USSR Council of Ministers Prize. In 1991 he was invited to Brown University, RI, and he stayed back in the United States. Sergei Khrushchev is currently senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. His books include Khrushchev on Khrushchev (1990), Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower (2000), and the three-volume Nikita Khrushchev: Trilogiya ob ottse (Trilogy about My Father) (2010).²

November 18, 2011

By telephone

Interviewer: Slava Gerovitch

The interview was conducted in Russian and translated by Slava Gerovitch.

Sergei Khrushchev has a unique insight into the inner workings of the Soviet space program. A control systems designer at Vladimir Chelomey’s design bureau, a major competitor of Sergey Korolev’s OKB-1, he also participated in discussions and business travels with his father, the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. While Sergei Khrushchev’s published memoirs focus on high-level deliberations involving his father and the leadership of the Soviet space program, the interview included in this collection reveals the organizational and engineering culture of Chelomey’s firm and its complex relationships with the rest of the Soviet rocket-space industry. Sergei Khrushchev’s account suggests that behind the rivalry over space projects between Chelomey and Korolev was not merely institutional competition for resources but a clash of two engineering cultures, one coming from aviation and the other from rocketry.