[26] His Armenian-influenced First Symphony, which Khachaturian composed as a graduation work from the Moscow Conservatory in 1935, "drew the attention of prominent conductors and was soon performed by the best Soviet orchestras"[28] and was admired by Shostakovich.

In fact, in his memoirs he reported pride about leading an institution that organized creative work in many musical genres and especially in all Soviet republics.

In 1939 he made a six-month trip to his native Armenia "to make a thorough study of Armenian musical folklore and to collect folk-song and dance tunes" for his first ballet, Happiness which he completed in the same year.

[11] In mid-December 1947, the Department for Agitation and Propaganda (better known as Agitprop) submitted to Andrei Zhdanov, the secretary of the Communist Party's Central Committee, a document on the "shortcomings" in the development of Soviet music.

On 10–13 January 1948, a conference was held at the Kremlin in the presence of seventy musicians, composers, conductors and others who were confronted by Zhdanov:[42] We will consider that if these comrades Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Myaskovsky, Khachaturian, Kabalevsky and Shebalin namely who are the principal and leading figures of the formalist direction in music.

In response, Khachaturian – who admitted that speaking at such an event made him nervous – conceded that composers of more complex work might be guilty of ignoring popular taste, thinking that it would catch up with them in time.

"[48] In March 1948,[49] Khachaturian "made a very full and humble apology for his artistic 'errors' following the Zhdanov decree; his musical style, however, underwent no changes".

[27] Under Georgy Malenkov's brief rule, in 1954, Khachaturian became a mouthpiece, along with Ilya Ehrenburg, to "assure Soviet intellectuals that the ideological controls imposed by the draconic Zhdanov decrees of 1946–48 would be at least temporarily lifted.

[16] Khachaturian's works span a broad range of musical types, including ballets, symphonies, concertos, and film scores.

Music critic Edward Greenfield expresses the opinion that Khachaturian "notably outshone other Soviet contemporaries in creating a sharply identifiable style, something which his successors have found impossible to emulate".

[54] Despite his formal restoration after the 1948 denunciation, Khachaturian only succeeded in composing one internationally acclaimed work in the last 30 years of his life, the ballet Spartacus.

[28] According to James Bakst, what made Khachaturian unique among Soviet composers is "the blending of national Armenian vocal and instrumental intonations with contemporary orchestral techniques".

[H] According to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, he "carried forward into the twentieth century the colorful, folk-inspired style of such nineteenth-century Russian composers as Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky".

[81] Like the members of The Five, especially Alexander Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov, whose works to some extent served him as a model, Khachaturian drew heavily upon "Eastern" and "Oriental" material in creating compositions in various classical genres and styles of European origin.

[69] Khachaturian's notable students at the Gnessin Institute and the Moscow Conservatory included foreign composers, such as Aziz El-Shawan from Egypt,[83][84] Modesta Bor from Venezuela,[85] Enrique Ubieta from Cuba,[86] Stefan Remenkov from Bulgaria,[87] and Anatol Vieru from Romania,[11] and a number of Soviet composers: Tolib Shakhidi,[88] Georgs Pelēcis,[89][90] Mark Minkov,[91] Alexey Rybnikov,[92] Andrei Eshpai,[11] Albert Markov,[93] Nodar Gabunia [ru],[17] Edgar Hovhannisyan,[17] Mikael Tariverdiev,[11] Eduard Khagagortyan [ru].

[96] Khachaturian's influence can be traced on chamber and symphonic music traditions of Armenia, including on the works of Arno Babajanian,[97][98] Edvard Mirzoyan, and Konstantin Orbelyan, among others.

[96] Critic Louis Biancolli noted in 1947 that Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have "borrowed" Khachaturian "on occasion for special research in national music.

[107] Eckhardt van den Hoogen called Vladigerov a sort of missing link between George Gershwin and Khachaturian.

[111] Schonberg further suggested that Yellow River Piano Concerto (1970), created by Yin Chengzong and others under the guidance of Mao's wife Jiang Qing,[112] is a "rehash of Rachmaninoff, Khachaturian, late Romanticism, bastardized Chinese music and Warner Bros climaxes.

"[110] Chunya Chang suggested that it "carries many connections" with the works of Khachaturian, including "imitations of national instruments and applications of folk music.

"[118] In Testimony, attributed by Solomon Volkov to Shostakovich, the author wrote: "Meeting Khachaturian means, first of all, eating a good, filling meal, drinking with pleasure, and chatting about this and that.

[57][121] Charlotte Curtis described her as "a bulky Russian woman with naturally pink cheeks, black hair" who is "widely known as one of the Soviet Union's most popular women composers.

"[128] Khachaturian wrote: "the October Revolution fundamentally changed my whole life and, if I have really grown into a serious artist, then I am indebted only to the people and the Soviet Government.

"[117] In January 1971, Khachaturian, along with Shostakovich, Igor Moiseyev, Maya Plisetskaya called on President Richard Nixon to free Angela Davis.

[129] In 1973 he joined eleven Soviet composers in condemning the nuclear physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov after he met with Western correspondents.

[137] The Age wrote that he was the "last survivor among such household names as Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Rachmaninov" and his death marked the "end of an era of the great Soviet composers."

While praising his work as exotic and colorful, he described Khachaturian as a "bureaucratic composer, turning out well-crafted pieces of no particular personality, and certainly nothing that would rock the boat".

[150] In 1968 New York Post music critic Harriett Johnson argued that while some may describe Khachaturian's style as "pop," she praised "the individuality of his melodies, infiltrated as they are with Oriental flavor of his Armenian heritage" and "the elemental surge of his rhythm which easily grows wild.

[162][163] In 1998, the Central Bank of Armenia issued 50-dram banknotes depicting Khachaturian's portrait and the Yerevan Opera Theater on the obverse and an episode from the ballet Gayane and Mount Ararat on the reverse.

[177] Busts of Khachaturian by the Armenian sculptor Mikael Soghoyan were erected at the Moscow Conservatory in 2017[178] and in front of an arts school named after him in Nizhny Novgorod in August 2021.