The road from Il'ich to Il'ich: The life and times of Anastas Ivanovich Mikoian

Slavic Review

Volumn 60, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 140-150

  Ellman, Michael ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0011200701     PISSN: 00376779     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2697647     Document Type: Review

References (40)

1. For example, chapter 2 of Roy Medvedev, All Stalin's Men, trans. Harold Shukman (Oxford, 1983) is entitled "A. I. Mikoyan: From Ilyich to Ilyich."
2. Mikoian was not the longest serving full member of the Politburo/Presidium. Both Iosif Stalin and Kliment Voroshilov served longer us full members, and Viacheslav Molotov served approximately the same length of time as a full member.
3. For tributes to the effectiveness of his work in the food industry, see A. I. Mikoian k 100-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia (Moscow, 1996), 60-63 and 73-77.
4. Roy Medvedev has argued that Mikoian's "political longevity was not due solely to good luck or cunning, to his flexibility or his capacity to give way to force or make compromises, to his phenomenal diplomatic talents. It was, rather, the consequence of his exceptional efficiency. Even Stalin knew the value of that, for after all many a revolution had occurred because of poor supplies - and not only in Russia." Medvedev, All Stalin's Men, 60.
5. Sergo Mikoian has argued that his father's political longevity was a result of three factors - his lack of careerism and personal ambition, his avoidance of sharp conflicts with Stalin, and his efficiency as an administrator. A. I. Mikoian k 100-letiiu, 90.
6. A. I. Mikoian, Dorogoi bor'by (Moscow, 1971);
7. and A. I. Mikoian, V nachale dvadtsatykh (Moscow, 1975).
8. The first of these books was translated into English and published as Memoirs of Anastas Mikoyan (Madison, Conn., 1988).
9. For a record of Lenin's remarks at this meeting, see document 276 in V. I. Lenin: Neizvestnye dokumenty, 1891-1922 (Moscow, 1999), 419-21.
10. For an English translation, see document 66 in Richard Pipes, ed., The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive (New Haven, 1996), 123-24.
11. O. V. Khlevniuk, A. V. Kvashonkin, L. P. Kosheleva, and L. A. Rogovaia, comps., Stalinskoe politbiuro v 30-e gody (Moscow, 1995), 55.
12. A discussion of the role of the permanent committee/inner Politburo in 1937-39, based on archival documents, can be found in O. V. Khlevniuk, Politbiuro: Mekhanizmy politicheskoi vlasti v 1930-e gody (Moscow, 1996), 237-39.
13. A de facto inner Politburo comprising Stalin, Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Ordzhonikidze, and Mikoian seems to have existed already in 1930. See Khlevniuk, Kvashonkin, Kosheleva, and Rogovaia, comps., Stalinskoe politbiuro, 97, 99.
14. N. S. Khrushchev, Doklad na zakrytom zasedanii XX s''ezda KPSS (Moscow, 1959), 57-58;
15. N. S. Khrushchev, "O kul'te lichnosti i ego posledstviiakh," Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 3: 163;
16. Bertram D. Wolfe, Khrushchev and Stalin's Ghost (London, 1957), 240-42. Khrushchev, who became a candidate member of the Politburo in 1938, and a full member in 1939, seems to have been excluded from the inner Politburo for many years.
17. According to Mikoian, during the war there was not a single Politburo meeting. The so-called Politburo minutes for the war period are in fact records of the decisions of the inner Politburo written up by Malenkov as if they were minutes of Politburo meetings. See G. A. Kumanev, "A. I. Mikoian," in G. A. Kumanev, Riadom s Stalinym: Otkrovennye svidetel'stva (Moscow, 1999), 35.
18. Elena A. Osokina, Za fasadom "Stalinskogo izobiliia": Raspredelenie i rynok v snabzhenii naseleniia v gody industrializatsii, 1927-1941 (Moscow, 1998), 206-18.
19. There is an English translation of this book, Elena A. Osokina, Our Daily Bread: Socialist Distribution and the Art of Survival in Stalin's Russia, 1927-1941 (Armonk, N.Y., 2000).
20. A State Defense Committee decree dated 15 October 1941 and signed by Stalin, ordering the evacuation from Moscow "today" of foreign diplomatic missions and of the government, is printed in Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1990, no. 12:217.
21. According to this document, "com. Stalin will be evacuated tomorrow [i.e., the 16th] or later, depending on the circumstances." In Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 1:216-17, there is a report to Aleksandr Shchcrbakov (then secretary of the Moscow party committee) about the destruction of their party cards on 16-17 October 1941 by "more than a thousand" (candidate) members of the party.
22. For a detailed discussion of the crisis, see J. Barber, "The Moscow Crisis of October 1941," in J. Cooper et al., eds., Soviet History, 1917-53 (Basingstoke, Eng., 1995), 201-18.
23. M. Ellman, "The 1947 Soviet Famine and the Entitlement Approach to Famines," Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2000, no. 5:608.
24. D. A. Volkogonov, Sem' vozhdei (Moscow, 1995), 1:382;
25. Ellman "1947 Soviet Famine," 608.
26. Zhores Medvedev, "Sekretnyi naslednik Stalina," Voprosy istorii, 1999, no. 7:94.
27. Leonid Efremov, Dorogami bor'by i truda (Saratov, 1998), 12-17;
28. Nuriddin Mukhitclinov, Gody provedennye v kremle (Tashkent, 1994), 81-83.
29. For the role of the Pospelov committee, see R. G. Pikhoia, Sovetskii Soiuz: Istoriia vlasti, 1945-1991 (Moscow, 1998), 139-46.
30. This agitation seems in particular to have resulted from a request at the beginning of February 1953 that he sign, along with numerous other prominent Jews, an "anti-Zionist" letter to be published in Pravda. For the text of the draft letter see Istochnik, 1997, no. 1:143-46.
31. For further information on the Shelepin-Brezhnev rivalry, see A. M. Aleksandrov-Agentov, Ot Kollontai do Gorbacheva (Moscow, 1994), 253-57,
32. and Fedor Burlatskii, Russkie gosudari epokha reformatsii (Moscow, 1996), 142-48.
33. D. Shepilov, "Vospominaniia," Voprosy istorii, 1998, no. 7:30.
34. This is confirmed by archival research. See Pikhoia, Sovetskii Soiuz, 157-64.
35. A. N. Iakovlev, Krestosev (Moscow, 2000).
36. For a photocopy of the report by Beriia proposing shooting the prisoners, with the approving signatures of Stalin, Voroshilov, Molotov, and Mikoian, see R. G. Pikhoia et al., eds., Katyn': Plenniki neob''iavlennoi voiny (Moscow, 1999), 385.
37. "Massovye repressii opravdany byt' ne mogut," Istochnik, 1995, no. 1:124. No numbers are given.
38. Istochnik, 1995, no. 1:123-30.
39. For the Central Committee decree adopted on the basis of this report, see "O dopolnitel'nykh merakh po vosstanovleniiu spravedlivosti v otnoshenii zhertv repressii, imevshikh mesto v period 30 - 40-kh i nachala 50-kh godov," Isvestiia TsK KPSS, 1989, no. 2:22-23.
40. According to his son Sergo, the decision on who was to deliver this speech was made by the Politburo, and the text was written by the NKVD itself. See A. I. Mikoian k 100-letiiu, 88-89.