Sergo Mikoyan
Encyclopedia
Sergo Anastasi Mikoyan was one of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

's leading historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

s who specialized on the foreign policies
Foreign policy
A country's foreign policy, also called the foreign relations policy, consists of self-interest strategies chosen by the state to safeguard its national interests and to achieve its goals within international relations milieu. The approaches are strategically employed to interact with other countries...

 of the Soviet Union and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

. He was the son of Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan was an Armenian Old Bolshevik and Soviet statesman during the rules of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev....

, an Old Bolshevik
Old Bolshevik
Old Bolshevik , also Old Bolshevik Guard or Old Party Guard, was an unofficial designation for those who were members of the Bolshevik party before the Russian Revolution of 1917, many of whom were either tried and executed by the NKVD during Stalin era purges or died under suspicious...

 and high level Soviet statesman and adviser to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...

.

Early life and education

Mikoyan was born to Ashkhen and Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan was an Armenian Old Bolshevik and Soviet statesman during the rules of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev....

 in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 on June 5, 1929. He joined the Communist Party
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...

 in 1953. In 1952, he graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. Mikoyan continued to live in Moscow until 1955. During the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War...

 in October 1962, Mikoyan accompanied his father Anastas Mikoyan, as his executive secretary, to Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

 in high level negotiations with Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...

 and documented much of his father's private reminisces about the crisis. From 1970 onwards, he was the chief editor of the leading Soviet journal
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

 on Latin American affairs, Latinskaya Amerika, a Russian-language monthly.

Scholarly life

Beginning in the late 1980s, Mikoyan was a participant in several joint Soviet/Russian-American international conferences on the crisis including the Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 sponsored conference at Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

 in October 1987, the Moscow conference in 1989, the Antigua
Antigua
Antigua , also known as Waladli, is an island in the West Indies, in the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean region, the main island of the country of Antigua and Barbuda. Antigua means "ancient" in Spanish and was named by Christopher Columbus after an icon in Seville Cathedral, Santa Maria de la...

 conference in 1991 and the Havana
Havana
Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...

 conference in January 1992. He also participated at the 40th Anniversary Conference of the crisis held from October 10 through October 12, 2002. Mikoyan later became a chief researcher at the Institute of Peace at the Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Academy of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences consists of the national academy of Russia and a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation as well as auxiliary scientific and social units like libraries, publishers and hospitals....

 and held a professorship at Georgetown University
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...

.

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Mikoyan's research and the possession of his father's unpublished memoirs have proved as important sources to American historians who specialize on the recent issues, namely the Cuban Missile Crisis, that have dominated the foreign affairs of the United States and the Soviet Union towards the countries of Latin America since the mid-1950s. While the focus of his studies also include Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, Mikoyan's work was largely concentrated on the leftist revolutionary movement
Revolutionary movement
Revolutionary movement is a specific type of social movement dedicated to carrying out a revolution. Charles Tilly defines it as a social movement advancing exclusive competing claims to control of the state, or some segment of it. An example of a revolutionary movement is the Armenian...

s in the region, most notably Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

, and its leaders such as Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...

 and Che Guevara
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...

.

Among the American historians and journalists Mikoyan has collaborated with are William Taubman
William Taubman
William Chase Taubman is an American political scientist. His biography of Nikita Khrushchev won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2004 and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography in 2003....

, Jon Lee Anderson
Jon Lee Anderson
Jon Lee Anderson is a biographer, author, international investigative reporter, and staff writer for The New Yorker, reporting from warzone locales such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Uganda, Israel, El Salvador, Ireland, Lebanon, Iran, and throughout the Middle East. Anderson has also written for The New...

, Georgie Anne Geyer
Georgie Anne Geyer
Georgie Anne Geyer is an American journalist and columnist for the Universal Press Syndicate. Her columns focus on foreign affairs issues and appear in approximately 120 newspapers in North and South America. She is the author of several books, including a biography of Fidel Castro.Geyer was born...

 and Irving Louis Horowitz.

Mikoyan died of leukemia
Leukemia
Leukemia or leukaemia is a type of cancer of the blood or bone marrow characterized by an abnormal increase of immature white blood cells called "blasts". Leukemia is a broad term covering a spectrum of diseases...

 in a Moscow clinic on March 7, 2010.

Selected works

США: Гocyдapcтвo Пoлитикa, Bыбopы (The USA: Government, Politics, Elections). Moscow, 1969. Kyбa cтpoит cоциализм. Moscow, 1976. "The Caribbean Crisis in Retrospect" in Latinskaya Amerika. no. 1 (January 1988), pp. 40–80.
  • Mikoyan, Anastas and Mikoyan, Sergo (ed.) The Memoirs of Anastas Mikoyan: The Path of Struggle, Vol 1. Translated from Russian. Sphinx Press, 1988 ISBN 0-9430-7104-6
  • Stalinism as I saw it. Occasional Paper. Washington: Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies
    Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies
    The Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars was founded in 1974 to the carry out studies of the Soviet Union , subsequently of post-Soviet Russia and other post-Soviet states....

    , 1991.
  • "The Future of the Soviet-Cuban Relationship" in The Russians Aren't Coming: New Soviet Policy in Latin America (ed. Wayne S. Smith). Boulder, Colorado
    Boulder, Colorado
    Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...

    : Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992.
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