Born in an intellectual Russian family exiled in France after the revolution, one of his uncles is Berkeley university professor Gleb Struve. Nikita became professor of Russian and founded and directed the religious magazine in French "Le Messager orthodoxe". As editor at YMCA-Press in Paris, he was in charge of the publication in Russian of
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archpelago" in 1973 and consulted on the French and other languages editions. He later became a Nanterre university professor.