Anastas Mikoyan — Profile, Rankings & Fame Trend

Summary

Updated 2026-06-10

He rode every wave of Soviet power without drowning. From Lenin's revolution to Brezhnev's stagnation, Anastas Mikoyan survived fifty-three years inside the machinery that killed most of his peers — inspiring the saying "from Ilyich to Ilyich without heart attack and paralysis."

Biography

About

An ethnic Armenian, Mikoyan joined the Bolsheviks in 1915 and fought in the Baku Commune after the October Revolution. He ran the North Caucasus for the party through the 1920s, entered the Politburo in 1935, and served as foreign trade minister twice while navigating Stalin's inner circle. By 1949 he was losing ground — stripped of his ministry, then publicly criticized by Stalin at the 19th Party Congress in 1952. Stalin's death the next year gave him an opening: he backed Khrushchev, helped crush a 1957 coup against him, and became the architect of de-Stalinization policy. Under Khrushchev…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Anastas Mikoyan

Anastas Mikoyan

said1978

We are watching the Germans closely; we are not forgetting what they did to us during the war.

— As quoted in "Soviet Foreign Policy Toward Western Europe" (1978) by George Ginsburgs and Alvin Z. Rubinstein, p. 105

Anastas Mikoyan

said1969

Stalin's methods did not help.

— As quoted in "One Man Alone: Richard Nixon" (1969) by Ralph de Toledano, p. 243

Anastas Mikoyan

said1969

The principle of collective leadership is elementary for a proletarian party and for a party of the Lenin type.

— As quoted in "The World Almanac and Book of Facts" (1969), p. 159

Anastas Mikoyan

said26 Jan 1959

We think we have got freedom of the press. When one millionaire has ten newspapers and ten million people have no newspapers—that is not freedom of the press.

— "Traveling With Mikoyan Quote By Quote" in Time magazine (26 January 1959)

Anastas Mikoyan

said26 Jan 1959