Sergei Khrushchev, a scholar and son of the late Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, will speak at the University of Central Florida about the former Soviet Union’s role in the modern world.

Khrushchev will present “Russia in the 21st Century” at 3 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 22, in the Pegasus Ballroom of the Student Union. The event, organized by the UCF Global Perspectives Office, is free and open to the public.

Khrushchev has been a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University since 1996; he previously served as a senior visiting scholar there for five years. He was a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1990.

His research focuses on the former Soviet Union’s transition from a centralized to a decentralized society and its switch to a market economy. He also studies the region’s international security during that transition.

In addition, Khrushchev is an expert on the history of Soviet missiles and space development, areas in which he played active roles.

From 1958 to 1968, he participated in the Soviet missile and space program, where he worked on cruise missiles for submarines, moon vehicles and military and research spacecraft. He served as first deputy director in charge of research at the Control Computer Institute in Moscow from 1968 to 1991.

Khrushchev is a regular media commentator and the author of more than 350 books and articles on engineering, computer science, history and economics. He also helped his father write his memoirs. The full text, “The Time, the People, the Power,” was published by the Moscow News in four volumes in 1999.

In addition to the Global Perspectives Office, sponsors and partners include the UCF Global Peace and Security Studies Program, The Sibille H. Pritchard Global Peace Fellowship Program, Lawrence J. Chastang and the Chastang Foundation, the Orlando Area Committee on Foreign Relations, LarsonAllen LLP, the UCF Diplomacy Program, the UCF Political Science Department, the UCF International Services Center, UCF LIFE and the Global Connections Foundation.

For a full list of upcoming events or to learn more about the Global Perspectives Office, visit http://ucfglobalperspectives.org or follow the office on Twitter at http://twitter.com/UCF_Global.