Son died under mysterious circumstances, while great-granddaughter condemned Putin: what is known about Nikita Khrushchev's descendants

Exactly 53 years ago, the first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Nikita Khrushchev, passed away. The 77-year-old politician died in hospital and, despite the "tradition" of his predecessors, was buried in Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow, not near the Kremlin walls.

Khrushchev, who was married twice, left behind five children: son Leonid and daughter Yulia from his first marriage and daughter Rada, son Sergei, and another daughter Elena from his second. Each of the heirs of the former head of the USSR Council of Ministers, including granddaughter Yulia, pro-Ukrainian great-granddaughter Nina, and great-great-grandson Alexei, went their separate ways, and some of them faced tragic circumstances. OBOZ.UA has collected the most interesting facts that will lift the veil on the politician's family.

Son Leonid

After graduating from a factory school, 17-year-old Leonid became a father. His little son, born in an unofficial marriage, was named Yuriy. The young man had to recognize the child because his father insisted on it (he was fond of interfering in his son's life).

After studying to be a pilot, Leonid chose the profession of a military pilot. He participated in the Soviet-Finnish war as a bomber pilot. Having divorced his first wife "on the orders of his father," Khrushchev married for the second time to extreme sports enthusiast Lyubov Sizykh, who was 5 years older than him. In 1940, the couple had a daughter, who was named Yulia.

At the outbreak of World War II, Leonid went to war, and in July 1941 it became known that his plane had been shot down and the pilot himself was seriously wounded. After recovering, he returned to the front as a fighter pilot. On March 11, 1943, the plane of Khrushchev's son did not return from a combat mission. A month and a half later, he was excluded from the unit's lists as missing as the search was unsuccessful. Because of this, his death was overgrown with myths and legends.

Granddaughter Yulia

Nikita Khrushchev adopted his granddaughter Yulia after Leonid's disappearance. At the time, the girl's mother, Lyubov, was sentenced to five years in prison followed by exile on suspicion of espionage.

Yulia Jr. considered her grandparents her parents until she was 17. She graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University, and in the 2000s she spoke out at various levels in defense of Nikita Khrushchev, her grandfather and adoptive father. On June 8, 2017, 77-year-old Yulia Khrushcheva was killed near the Michurinets platform.

Great-granddaughter Nina

Nina Khrushcheva emigrated to the United States and settled in New York in the early 90s. She became the director of the Russia Project at the World Policy Institute, which focuses on national security, intelligence, and international affairs. Nina has repeatedly publicly condemned the annexation of Crimea and criticized Russia's aggression against Donbas.

Daughter Yulia

Very little is known about the life of Yulia, Khrushchev's daughter from his first marriage. The Soviet leader's second wife, Nina Kukharchuk, became a full-fledged stepmother to her husband's children.

The politician's eldest daughter dreamed of becoming an architect and entered a university. However, she contracted tuberculosis. Due to her long treatment, she had to leave her studies. Later, Khrushcheva worked as a chemical laboratory assistant.

Yulia married the director of the Kyiv Opera, Viktor Hontar, but the couple never had any children. Yulia Khrushcheva died in 1981 at the age of 65.

Daughter Rada

Khrushchev had three daughters and a son while married to Nina Kukharchuk. The first girl, Nadya, died in infancy. In 1929, Rada was born, later better known as Rada Adzhubei-Khrushcheva

Rada graduated from a Kyiv high school with honors, then studied at Moscow State University, first at the Faculty of Philology, and then transferred to journalism. While still studying, she married her classmate Alexei Adzhubei, who, thanks to his connections, later became the editor-in-chief of Komsomolskaya Pravda and then Izvestia. Rada died on August 11, 2016, at the age of 87.

Grandson Alexei

Rada's son Alexei Adzhubei died in Moscow in early January 2024. He was 69 years old. According to Russian propagandists, doctors were unable to save the elderly man. When they got to his apartment on Tverskaya Street, he was already dead.

Son Sergei

Sergei, Nikita Khrushchev's second son, was born in 1935. Like his sister Rada, he graduated from high school with a gold medal. In 1958, Khrushchev graduated from the Faculty of Vacuum Engineering at the Moscow Polytechnic Institute with a degree in engineering. Subsequently, Khrushchev began to develop cruise and ballistic missile projects, participated in the creation of spacecraft landing systems, and the Proton launch vehicle.

In 1991, Sergei was invited to the United States to lecture on the history of the Cold War. The conditions offered to him were so good that Khrushchev retrained from a structural engineer to a political scientist and stayed in the United States.

He gave lectures at other educational institutions, traveled around the United States, and talked a lot about his famous dad. In June 2020, Sergei was found murdered. The descendant of a Soviet politician died from a headshot.

Daughter Elena

Little is known about Khrushchev's youngest daughter, Elena. According to available data, she was born in 1937, and according to the memoirs of her brother Sergei, Elena was diagnosed with systemic lupus as a child. Despite her struggle with the disease, she managed to get a higher education, found a job, and got married. The disease caught up with her in 1972, a year after her father's death. elena passed away at the age of 35.

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