Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan (1895  1978). 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.