A historian who reconstructed the Cold War’s hidden record
As his father's personal secretary, he recorded the Cuban negotiations, and the documents he later donated revealed that tactical nuclear weapons remained in Cuba after the missile withdrawal.
Sergo Mikoyan was a Soviet and Russian historian of Latin America and Soviet foreign policy, as well as the son of Anastas Mikoyan. His experience accompanying his father to Cuba in 1962, together with his personal records, helped reveal that Soviet tactical nuclear weapons remained on the island after the public missile withdrawal and that the negotiations deepened the rift with the Cuban leadership. As editor of the journal Latin America, he helped shape the field and later joined collaborative Soviet-American research on the Cold War.
Career timeline
- 1952Graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations
- 1956Completed postgraduate study at the same institute
- 1957–1960Academic editor of World Economy and International Relations
- 1960–1990Researcher at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations
- 1962Accompanied Anastas Mikoyan during the Cuban negotiations
- 1970–1990Editor-in-chief of the monthly journal Latin America
- 1990sCollaborated with U.S. universities and archival projects
- 2000sProfessor at Georgetown University
The historian who argued the USSR built nations, not destroyed them, the 'revenge of the past' thesis
In sixth grade I gave a report on how the Soviet Union had defeated fascism and built cities the size of San Francisco since the war. My teacher blanched. From that day until I graduated, I was known as Comrade Suny.
An Armenian-American historian who transformed the paradigm of Soviet nationalities studies. In his 1993 book The Revenge of the Past, he overturned the Cold War consensus that the Soviet system repressed and Russified nationalities, arguing instead that Soviet nationality policy, through territorial demarcation, language codification, and ethnic bureaucracies, institutionalized and built national identities, ultimately creating the very nations that would destroy the Union. This 'revenge of the past' thesis became the dominant paradigm in post-Soviet nationalities research. He is also noted for major studies of each South Caucasus nation and won the Deutscher Memorial Prize for his 2020 biography of Stalin.
Career timeline
- 1968–1981Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor of History, Oberlin College
- 1981–1995Alex Manoogian Chair in Modern Armenian History, University of Michigan
- 1995–2005Professor of Political Science and History, University of Chicago
- 2005President, AAASS
- 2005–2015Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Social and Political History, University of Michigan
- 2015–2022William H. Sewell Jr. Distinguished University Professor of History, University of Michigan
- 1993Published The Revenge of the Past, transforming the paradigm of Soviet nationalities studies
- 2021Deutscher Memorial Prize for Stalin: Passage to Revolution
Nobel laureate who showed why the Kosygin reform was structurally doomed by extractive institutions
From Why Nations Fail: 'Soviet Russia generated rapid growth as it caught up rapidly with some of the advanced technologies in the world but was running out of steam by the 1970s because of a lack of creative destruction.'
Born to an Armenian family in Istanbul and later becoming an MIT economics professor, Daron Acemoglu is a leading institutional economist who won the 2024 Nobel Prize, alongside Simon Johnson and James Robinson, for explaining the institutional origins of prosperity gaps between nations. In Why Nations Fail (2012), written with Robinson, he analyzed the Soviet economy, arguing that prices under central planning were disconnected from real value and could not price innovation, while tying bonuses to the total wage fund killed any incentive for enterprises to automate, making the Kosygin reform structurally doomed from the start. His insight that sustained growth is impossible without inclusive institutions has had broad influence across development economics and political economy.
Career timeline
- 1989BA, University of York
- 1992PhD, London School of Economics
- 1993–MIT Economics (full professor 2000)
- 2010–Killian Professor of Economics, MIT
- 2019–Institute Professor, MIT
- 2012Why Nations Fail published (with J. Robinson)
- 2024Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences
