Mikoyan was elected to the Politburo in 1935, served as foreign trade minister from 1926 to 1930 and again from 1938, and during World War II became a member of the State Defense Committee.

Under Khrushchev, Mikoyan played an important role in Soviet foreign policy, making several key trips to the United States and communist Cuba.

[2] Mikoyan received his education at the Nersisian School in Tiflis and the Gevorgian Seminary in Vagharshapat (Echmiadzin), both affiliated with the Armenian Apostolic Church.

[3] His interactions with Soviet revolutionaries led him to Baku, where he became the co-editor for the Armenian-language newspaper Sotsyal-Demokrat and later for the Russian-language paper Izvestia Bakinskogo Soveta.

A commando unit, led by Mikoyan, organized their escape from prison, and they fled across the Caspian Sea to Krasnovodsk (today Türkmenbaşy in present-day Turkmenistan).

Mikoyan spent three months in the United States, where he not only learned more about its food industry but also met and spoke with Henry Ford and inspected Macy's in New York.

The result, The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food (Книга о вкусной и здоровой пище, Kniga o vkusnoi i zdorovoi pishche), was published in 1939.

[17] In the late 1930s Stalin embarked upon the Great Purge, a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated against members of the Communist Party, as well as the peasantry and unaffiliated persons.

In September 1937, Stalin dispatched Georgy Malenkov and Mikhail Litvin (1892–1938) of the NKVD to Yerevan, the capital of Soviet Armenia, in response to the death of Sahak Ter-Gabrielyan.

[19] However, on Stalin's orders, he led the attack during a stormy session of the Central Committee of the Armenian Communist Party in September 1937, during which Amatuni angrily called him a "liar.

The Soviets arrested 26,000 Polish officers in the eastern portion of Poland and in March 1940, after some deliberation, Stalin and five other members of the Politburo, Mikoyan included, signed an order for their execution as "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries".

[6] Mikoyan originally argued against punishing Stalin's right-hand man, Beria, but later gave in to popular support among Party members for his arrest.

[19] In 1954, he visited his native Armenia and gave a speech in Yerevan, where he encouraged Armenians to republish the works of Raffi and the purged writer, Yeghishe Charents.

[34] Behind the scenes, he assisted Soviet Armenian leaders in the rehabilitation of former "enemies" in the republic,[19] and worked with Lev Shahumyan (son of Stepan), as well as Gulag returnees Alexei Snegov and Olga Shatunovskaya on the process of de-Stalinization.

Although Mikoyan opposed force and sought dialogue with the demonstrators, Kozlov pushed for a harsh response, resulting in the Novocherkassk massacre.

He arrived at Mao's headquarters on 30 January 1949, one day before the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek was forced to abandon Nanjing, which was then China's capital, and move to Guangzhou.

[39] On 11 November 1951, Mikoyan made a sudden visit to Prague to deliver a message from Stalin to President Klement Gottwald insisting that Rudolf Slánský, former Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, should be arrested.

He returned in October to gather information on the developing crisis caused by the revolution against the Hungarian Working People's Party government there.

Despite the volatility of the Cold War between the two superpowers, many Americans received Mikoyan amiably, including Minnesota Democrat Hubert Humphrey, who characterized him as someone who showed a "flexibility of attitude" and New York governor Averell Harriman, who described him as a "less rigid" Soviet politician.

"[45] However, Mikoyan eventually left for Washington DC, which was the first time a senior governing member of the USSR's Council of Ministers visited the United States on a diplomatic mission to its leadership.

Furthermore, Mikoyan approached the mission with unprecedented informality, beginning with phrasing his visa request to US Embassy as "a fortnight's holiday" to visit his friend, Mikhail Menshikov, the then Soviet Ambassador to the United States.

While the White House was taken off guard by this seemingly impromptu diplomatic mission, Mikoyan was invited to speak to numerous elite American organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Detroit Club in which he professed his hopes for the USSR to have a more peaceful relationship with the US.

[46] In addition to such well received engagements, Mikoyan indulged in more informal opportunities to meet the public such as having breakfast at a Howard Johnson's restaurant on the New Jersey Turnpike, visiting Macy's Department Store in New York City and meeting celebrities in Hollywood like Jerry Lewis and Sophia Loren before having an audience with President Dwight Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

[47] Although Mikoyan failed to alter the US's Berlin policy,[48] he was hailed in the US for easing international tensions with an innovative emphasis on soft diplomacy that largely went over well with the American public.

[49] Mikoyan disapproved of Khrushchev's walkout from the 1960 Paris Summit over the U-2 Crisis of 1960, which he believed kept tension in the Cold War high for another fifteen years.

[58][59] Castro was adamant that the missiles remain but Mikoyan, seeking to avoid a full-fledged confrontation with the United States, attempted to convince him otherwise.

[62] On 15 July 1964, Mikoyan was appointed as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, replacing Leonid Brezhnev, who received a promotion within the Party.

[63] Some historians are convinced that by 1964 Mikoyan believed that Khrushchev had turned into a liability to the Party, and that he was involved in the October 1964 coup that brought Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin to power.

[76] His supporters argue that he was a major figure on the global political stage and usually point to his role in defusing the Cuban missile crisis.

[69] One veteran Soviet official described his political career in the following manner: "The rascal was able to walk through Red Square on a rainy day without an umbrella [and] without getting wet.