--- title: Anastas Mikoyan url: https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/anastas-mikoyan/ description: 3 verified quotes from Anastas Mikoyan, Member of the Politburo/Presidium; People's Commissar and Minister of Trade and Foreign Trade; First Deputy… section: FRAME --- ![Illustration: a dense, generic Cold War intelligence analyst's evidence wall of press photography, redacted reports and aerial reconnaissance imagery.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-evidence-wall.jpg) [Quotes](https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/) · Soviet Union # Anastas Mikoyan ![Anastas Mikoyan in 1950](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/images/soviet-union/anastas-mikoyan.jpg) [Photo](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A.I._Mikoyan_TASS_Portrait_Trim_Edit_(cropped).jpg): G. Weil (Grigory Vayl) for TASS, Public domain (PD-Russia; PD-1996) Member of the Politburo/Presidium; People's Commissar and Minister of Trade and Foreign Trade; First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers; Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, 1964-1965 · Soviet Union On the regime page: [Soviet Union under Stalin](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/soviet-union/#anastas-mikoyan) 3 quotes, oldest first. [Filter with other speakers](https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/#speaker=anastas-mikoyan). 1. > “The principle of collective leadership is elementary for a proletarian party, for a party of the Leninist type. But we have to stress this old truth because for some twenty years we actually had no collective leadership, and the cult of the individual, condemned first by Marx and then by Lenin, prevailed. And this naturally could not fail to have an extremely adverse effect on the situation in the party and on its activities.” — English: Soviet News Booklet no. 8 (London, 1956); translator not credited. Original-language text not found. — February 16, 1956 · Speech · Moscow, Twentieth Congress of the CPSU — Mikoyan, First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, spoke in the debate on Khrushchev's report to the Congress, eight days before Khrushchev's closed "secret speech" on Stalin. — Speech at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, 16 February 1956, in Speech by A. I. Mikoyan (London: Soviet News Booklet no. 8, 1956), pp. 3-4 [Source](https://archive.org/details/speechmikoyan20thcongress) 2. > “The central committee’s report speaks of the unsatisfactory nature of our propaganda work. One of the reasons for this is that, as a rule, we teach Marxism-Leninism on the basis of the Short History of the Party. That of course is incorrect. The wealth of ideas of Marxism-Leninism cannot be contained within the limits of the subject of the history of our party, all the more so since it is a brief history. For this we need special theoretical textbooks for comrades at different educational levels. That is the first thing. Secondly, the present Short History of the Party is unsatisfactory because it does not deal with the events of nearly twenty years of our party. And how can we justify the absence of a history of our party for the past twenty years?” — English: Soviet News Booklet no. 8 (London, 1956); translator not credited. Original-language text not found. — February 16, 1956 · Speech · Moscow, Twentieth Congress of the CPSU — In the same speech Mikoyan criticised the Short Course of the history of the party, the textbook issued in 1938 under Stalin's name, as incomplete and unsatisfactory for teaching Marxism-Leninism. — Speech at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, 16 February 1956, in Speech by A. I. Mikoyan (London: Soviet News Booklet no. 8, 1956) [Source](https://archive.org/details/speechmikoyan20thcongress) 3. > “In analysing the economic situation of present-day capitalism it is doubtful whether we get any help from Stalin’s thesis in the Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. or whether it is correct—in relation to the United States, Britain and France—that, with the break-up of the world market the “volume of production in these countries will shrink”. This assertion does not explain the complex and contradictory phenomena of present-day capitalism and the fact of the growth of capitalist production in many countries since the war.” — English: Soviet News Booklet no. 8 (London, 1956); translator not credited. Original-language text not found. — February 16, 1956 · Speech · Moscow, Twentieth Congress of the CPSU — Mikoyan questions a prediction in Stalin's Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. (1952) that production in the capitalist countries would shrink after the break-up of the world market. — Speech at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU, 16 February 1956, in Speech by A. I. Mikoyan (London: Soviet News Booklet no. 8, 1956) [Source](https://archive.org/details/speechmikoyan20thcongress) ## Often attributed, not verified These words circulate under Anastas Mikoyan’s name but could not be traced to a source. They are listed so readers can check them, not as Anastas Mikoyan’s words. - > “From Ilyich to Ilyich without heart attack or paralysis.” — Unverifiable Usually said to come from: Mikoyan, on how he survived from Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich) to Brezhnev (Leonid Ilyich); Russian form "От Ильича до Ильича без инфаркта и паралича" — Not found in Mikoyan's 1956 Twentieth Congress speech or the other Mikoyan texts consulted. It circulates as a quip attributed to him without a dated source.