[3] As a member of the USSR team Nikitin won the World University Championships in 1955, 1957 and 1958.
[4] Nikitin made his debut as a coach in 1963, when he and Igor Bondarevsky prepared the USSR student team for the Olympic Games.
[5] In 1992, Nikitin helped Boris Spassky during his exhibition match with Bobby Fischer.
In the late 1990s, he served as the permanent coach of Étienne Bacrot, who became the youngest grandmaster in the world and the multiple champion of France.
[3] Niktin also coached Russian grandmaster Dmitry Yakovenko, the individual European champion in 2012, who was fifth in the FIDE world ranking.