HYANNIS – The John F. Kennedy Hyannis Museum continues its speaker series tonight with Dr. Sergei Khrushchev, the son of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
Nikita Khruschev was the Premier of the USSR from 1954-1964 at the height of the Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis.
Sergei immigrated to the United States in 1991 and became a naturalized U.S. Citizen in 1999.
He is now a Senior Research Fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies.
In addition to sharing insights about his father and the Cuban Missile Crisis, he’ll discuss the current tensions between Russia and the Ukraine.
Another focus will be the history of Soviet missiles and space development, in which he played an active role from 1958-1968.
Khrushchev will talk about his father’s relationship with President Kennedy, and how the two grew to respect one another after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
“They trusted each other,” he said, recalling that Kennedy said he was very different from Khrushchev but they also had things in common: “to prevent war and save the world.”
Khrushchev says he believes the Cold War would have ended earlier had his father and JFK remained in power throughout the sixties.
He said they both wanted to bring the Cold War to an end, without ending the competition between the two countries, “to transform this competition from the military competition to the economical competition.”
The discussion with Khrushchev gets underway at Barnstable High School at 6:30 tonight.
