Mikoyan, Anastas Ivanovich (1895-1978)

Armenian communist politician. He was Soviet minister of trade under Stalin and one of only nine members of the State Defence Committee during World War II (the country's supreme body at that time). He supported Khrushchev after Stalin's death and was a first deputy prime minister of the USSR 1955-64 and chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (president of the USSR) 1964-65.

Mikoyan joined the Communist Party in 1915, and worked in Tiflis (modern Tbilisi, Georgia) and Baku (Azerbaijan). In 1921 he became head of the party organization in Nizhniy-Novgorod, and from 1922 to 1926 in the northern Caucasus. He was made a member of the Party's Central Committee in 1923. He supported Stalin in the inner-party struggle after Lenin's death and was made candidate member of the Politburo in 1926 and a full member in 1935. He was in charge of trade, both foreign and internal, from 1926, and of food industries from 1934 to 1938. In 1937 he was made a Soviet deputy prime minister.

After Georgi Malenkov's resignation as prime minister in 1955 Mikoyan became one of the most prominent members of the ‘collective leadership’. He supported Khrushchev as the latter built up his personal dominance, and was frequently used for important missions abroad. He finally retired on grounds of ill-health.