MIKOYAN, ANASTAS IVANOVICH

(1895–1978), Communist Party leader and government official.

Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan occupied the summits of Soviet political and governmental life for more than five decades. One of Stalin's comrades, he was a political survivor. Armenian by birth, Mikoyan joined the Bolsheviks in 1915, playing a leading role in the Caucasus during the civil war (1918–1920). In 1922 he was elected to the Communist Party's Central Committee, by which time he was already working confidentially for Josef Stalin. After Vladimir Lenin's death (1924) he staunchly supported Stalin's struggle against the Left Opposition. His loyalty was rewarded in 1926 when he became the youngest commissar and Politburo member. Appointed commissar of food production in 1934, he introduced major innovations in this area. By 1935 he was a full member of the Politburo. While not an aggressive advocate of the Great Terror (1937–1938), Mikoyan was responsible for purges in his native Armenia. In 1942, after the German invasion, he was appointed to the State Defense Committee, with responsibility for military supplies. After Stalin's death (1953) he proved a loyal ally of Nikita Khrushchev, the only member of Stalin's original Politburo to support him in his confrontation with the Stalinist Anti-Party Group (1957). Mikoyan went on to play a crucial role in the Cuban missile crisis (1962), mediating between Khrushchev, U.S. president John F. Kennedy, and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, whom he persuaded to accept the withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba. He was appointed head of government in July 1964, three months before signing the decree dismissing Khrushchev as party first secretary. Under Leonid Brezhnev he gradually relinquished his roles in party and government in favor of writing his memoirs, finally retiring in 1975.

See also: anti-party group; armenia and armenians; cuban missile crisis; left opposition; purges, the great

bibliography

Medvedev, Roy. (1984). All Stalin's Men. (1984). Garden City, NY: Anchor Press.

Taubman, William; Khrushchev, Sergei; and Gleason, Abbott, eds. (2000). Nikita Khrushchev. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Roger D. Markwick

Mikoyan, Anastas Ivanovich (b. 25 Nov. 1895, d. 21 Oct. 1978). President of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet 1964–5 The supreme survivor of Soviet politics (second only to Kosygin) was born in Sanain (Armenia), where he was educated at a seminary. After the Russian Revolution of February 1917, he joined the Bolsheviks, and rose quickly within the ranks of the regional Caucasian party hierarchy. He became a full member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1923, was a candidate (i.e. non-voting) member of the Politburo from 1926 and full member from 1935 until his retirement in 1966. In this position he held several governmental posts, serving as Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (Council of Ministers from 1946) until 1964, when he became the formal head of the Soviet Union. His career was closely linked to his fellow Caucasian, Stalin, even more so as he survived (and participated in) the Great Purge and other acts of terror. It was a testimony to his political survival skills that he retained his position despite Khrushchev's anti-Stalinist campaigns.

Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan , 1895–1978, Soviet Communist leader. He joined the Communist party in 1915, became a member of the party's central committee in 1923, and subsequently held cabinet posts concerned with trade and the food industry. In 1935 he was elected to the politburo, the ruling body of the central committee of the Communist party. He held other high government posts before serving (1955–57, 1958–64) as first deputy premier. In 1964–65, Mikoyan was chairman of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet, or titular head of state. Although not reelected to the politburo in 1966, he continued to serve on the central committee. In 1974 he was dropped from the Supreme Soviet and in 1976 from the central committee, thereby completing his retirement from public office.