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Anastas Mikoyan Quotes

Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan was a Armenian Communist revolutionary, Old Bolshevik and Soviet statesman during the mandates of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. He was the only Soviet politician who managed to remain at the highest levels of power within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as that power oscillated between the Central Committee and the Politburo, from the latter days of Lenin's rule, throughout the eras of Stalin and Khrushchev, until his peaceful retirement after the first months of Brezhnev's rule.

Mikoyan became an early convert to the Bolshevik cause. He was a strong supporter of Stalin during the immediate post-Lenin years. During Stalin's rule, Mikoyan held several high governmental posts, including that of Minister of Foreign Trade. By the end of Stalin's rule, Mikoyan began to lose favour with him, and in 1949, Mikoyan lost his long-standing post of minister of foreign trade. In October 1952 at the 19th Party Congress Stalin even attacked Mikoyan viciously. When Stalin died in 1953, Mikoyan again took a leading role in policy-making. He backed Khrushchev and his de-Stalinization policy and became First Deputy Premier under Khrushchev. Mikoyan's position under Khrushchev made him the second most powerful figure in the Soviet Union at the time.

Mikoyan made several key trips to communist Cuba and to the United States, acquiring an important stature on the international diplomatic scene, especially with his skill in exercising soft power to further Soviet interests. In 1964 Khrushchev was forced to step down in a coup that brought Brezhnev to power. Mikoyan served as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the nominal Head of State, from 1964 until his forced retirement in 1965.



Wikipedia  

✵ 13. November 1895 – 21. October 1978
Anastas Mikoyan photo
Anastas Mikoyan: 14   quotes 1   like

Famous Anastas Mikoyan Quotes

“We think we have got freedom of the press. When one millionaire has ten newspapers and ten million people have no newspapers—that is not freedom of the press.”

Anastas Mikoyan

Traveling With Mikoyan Quote By Quote (1959)

“If Soviet Union were to fire over this zone with nuclear weapons directed at France, or if, conversely, the Americans or the French were to fire over this territory with nuclear weapons towards Russia, the resulting radioactive clouds would be driven into this territory by the west winds from the one side, and the east winds from the other, and the Soviet Union could certainly not request the winds to keep to a specific path.”

Anastas Mikoyan

Statement to Konrad Adenauer (April 1958), as quoted in "Konrad Adenauer" (1995) by Hans-Peter Schwarz, p. 308

“If Stalin could only see us now, with the American Ambassador here, he'd turn in his grave.”

Anastas Mikoyan

As quoted in "MAYDAY: Eisenhower, Khrushchev, and the U-2 Affair" (1986) by Michael R. Beschloss, p. 42

“Like Lenin Comrade Stalin is a leader of a higher type. He is a mountain eagle, without fear in the fight, who boldly leads the bolshevik party on unexplored roads toward the total victory of Communism.”

Anastas Mikoyan

Statement of 13 March 1939, as quoted in "Facts on Communism" (1960) by the United States Congress, p. 157

“We cannot, after all, ignore the fact that the cold war is being fostered from the U. S. No one will deny that American bases around our country are not being reduced; in fact they are being strengthened. All of this is bound to cause suspicion, and it is bound to cause the Soviet leaders to be cautious and vigilant.”

Anastas Mikoyan

Traveling With Mikoyan Quote By Quote (1959)

“There are no U. S. flyers in our country. The bodies were handed over to the Americans. We have no other bodies of flyers or living flyers in the Soviet Union. If we had, why should we try to hide them?”

Anastas Mikoyan

Traveling With Mikoyan Quote By Quote (1959)

Anastas Mikoyan Quotes about people

“Ordinary people abroad take a better attitude toward men who come as guests with their wives. And if they are accompanied by other members of their family, that disposes people even more favorably toward them. Therefore, I would propose that Khrushchev take Nina Petrovna with him and also include in the delegation other members of his family. This will be well received by ordinary Americans, and that would be better for us.”

Anastas Mikoyan

As quoted in "Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, Vol. 3 : Statesman (2007), by Nikita Khrushchev, p. 95

“We are accused of all sorts of terrible things, of us wanting to undermine your market, of dumping and so forth. There was no such talk before, but when you had your recession, there were people who wanted to put the whole blame on the Russians. All these fables of us being such terrible devils are not well founded. We want to trade in earnest and well.”

Anastas Mikoyan

Traveling With Mikoyan Quote By Quote (1959)

“All peoples enjoy freedom, and freedom for the development of their culture… There is no Jewish problem in the Soviet Union at all… I have many friends who are Jews.”

Anastas Mikoyan

Statement of January 1959, as quoted in "The Soviet Government and the Jews 1948-1967" (1984), p. 66

Anastas Mikoyan Quotes

“One former member of [the antiparty] group [Molotov] became an ambassador. True, the country [Outer Mongolia] may not be large, but it is an ambassadorship. I do not want to mention names, but you have some former Secretaries of State. I do not know where they are today, but they are not ambassadors. A second member of the group [Kaganovich] is now head of the state asbestos trust. Is that punishment, to head up a big monopoly? … It is better to confess to one's errors than to persist in them.”

Anastas Mikoyan

Traveling With Mikoyan Quote By Quote (1959)

Error , Country

“While Zinoviev is in the majority he is for iron discipline…. When he is in the minority… he is against it.”

Anastas Mikoyan

Statement about Grigory Zinoviev, as quoted in "The Soviet Colossus : History and Aftermath" (2001) by Michael Kort, p. 172

“Stalin's methods did not help.”

Anastas Mikoyan

As quoted in "One Man Alone: Richard Nixon" (1969) by Ralph de Toledano, p. 243

Help

“We are watching the Germans closely; we are not forgetting what they did to us during the war.”

Anastas Mikoyan

As quoted in "Soviet Foreign Policy Toward Western Europe" (1978) by George Ginsburgs and Alvin Z. Rubinstein, p. 105

War , Forgetting

“The principle of collective leadership is elementary for a proletarian party and for a party of the Lenin type. Nevertheless, we must emphasize this old truth, because for about 20 years we have had practically no collective leadership; there flourished the cult of the individual which was condemned first by Marx and then by Lenin. And this, of course, could not but reflect negatively on the position of the party and its work.”

Anastas Mikoyan

As quoted in "The World Almanac and Book of Facts" (1969), p. 159

Truth

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