He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) in 1919 and was arrested by the Georgian authorities in 1920.

[1] During the Great Purge, Arutinov's brother Sergo and brother-in-law Artyom Geurkov were arrested and shot in Georgia.

[1] During Arutinov's tenure Armenia saw considerable agricultural and industrial expansion, with the capital Yerevan in particular enjoying significant growth and development.

[4] In 1945, Arutinov unsuccessfully appealed to Joseph Stalin to attach the Armenian-majority Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, which was part of the Azerbaijan SSR, to Soviet Armenia.

[5] In 1949, under the orders of the Ministry of State Security of the USSR, approximately 12,000 people were forcibly resettled from Armenia to the Altai Krai.

[1] At the meeting of the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Armenia on November 28, 1953, he was removed from the post of the first secretary and replaced by Suren Tovmasyan.