Khrushchev: 'I feel myself very proud'  INTERACTIVE: Cold War

July 12, 1999
Web posted at: 6:00 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT)

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (CNN) -- Calling it the "beginning of a new life," the son of one of the Soviet Union's most enduring symbols of the Cold War was sworn in as a U.S. citizen Monday

"I feel myself very proud," beamed Sergei Khrushchev shortly after he and his wife took the oath of U.S. citizenship with 245 others at a Catholic school in Providence.

"If you decide to be a citizen of a very great country, you must be proud. You have to be proud," he said.

Khrushchev, the son of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, first came to Rhode Island in 1991 to teach Cold War history at Brown University.

Only recently did the couple decide to trade their temporary status for U.S. citizenship.

"I think, if you're living in a country, you have to be a citizen," said Khrushchev, wearing a blue pinstriped suit and shiny black shoes for the occasion.

The professor dismissed criticism that he had turned his back on his Russian homeland.

"With my father's time, we lived in the Cold War," he said. "Now we are living in the same world. Both (the United States and Russia) have the market economy, so I don't see any problems."

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