Anastas Mikoyan: An Armenian Reformer in Khrushchev’s Kremlin

Veteran Soviet statesman and longtime Politburo member Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan is perhaps best remembered in both the West and the post-Soviet space as a master political survivor who weathered every Soviet leader from Lenin to Brezhnev. Less well known is the pivotal role that Mikoyan played in dismantling and rejecting the Stalinist legacy and guiding Khrushchev’s nationality policy toward greater decentralization and cultural expression for nationalities.

Based on new discoveries from the Russian and Armenian archives, Anastas Mikoyan is the first major biographical study in English of a key figure in Soviet politics. The book focuses on the Armenian statesman’s role as a reformer during the Thaw of 1953-1964, when Stalin’s death and Khrushchev’s ascension opened the door to greater pluralism and democratization in the Soviet Union. Mikoyan had been a loyal Stalinist, but his background as a native Armenian guided his Thaw-era reform initiatives on nationality policy and de-Stalinization. The statesman advocated a dynamic approach to governance, rejecting national nihilism and embracing a multitude of ethnicities under the aegis of ＂socialist democracy,＂ using Armenia as his exemplar. While the Soviet government adopted most of Mikoyan’s recommendations, Khrushchev’s ouster in 1964 ended the prospects for political change and led to Mikoyan’s own resignation the following year. Nevertheless, Mikoyan remained a prominent public figure until his death in 1978.

Following a storied statesman through his personal and professional connections within and beyond the Soviet state, Anastas Mikoyan offers important insights into nation-building, the politics of difference, and the lingering possibilities of political reform in the USSR.

Pietro A. Shakarian is a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union and a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Historical Research at the National Research University-Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg, Russia. He earned his PhD in History at The Ohio State University and his MA at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He was previously a lecturer in history at the American University of Armenia in Yerevan.