Anastas Mikoyan §

Born in Sanahin, Lori, in 1895 to a village carpenter; trained at the Nersessian school and Echmiadzin seminary before joining the Bolsheviks in 1915. As one of the "26 Baku Commissars" he was the only senior member to escape the September 1918 executions in Krasnovodsk; rose through Stalin's patronage to candidate Politburo membership in 1926 and full membership in 1935, surviving every purge. Trade and Foreign Trade Commissar of the USSR for nearly two decades, he built the Soviet consumer-goods sector (canning, ice-cream, ready-meals) and led the December 1959 mission to Cuba that opened Soviet relations with Castro. Petitioned Stalin in November 1945, together with Catholicos Gevorg VI and Communist Party of Armenia first secretary Grigor Harutiunian, for the transfer of the NKAO to the Armenian SSR; the request was forwarded but quietly buried. Renewed the petition under Khrushchev in early 1965 with similar non-result. Member of the Presidium 1953–66 and chair of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet 1964–65; the only Old Bolshevik to retire honourably from the Soviet leadership. Died in Moscow in 1978.