Dr. Pietro Shakarian's interview in "The HSE Look"

An interview with Dr. Pietro Shakarian, the research fellow of the Center for Historical Research, who has been hired through the International Faculty Recruitment Initiative, was published in the August issue of "The HSE Look" (an English supplement to the University’s bulletin "Okna Rosta")

Designed by «The HSE Look»

Pietro Annanias Shakarian

Research fellow

I found some incredible materials, but I had no time to really expand my work into a book due to my ongoing teaching obligations. Moreover, I always wanted to complete my unfinished research in the Russian archives. It was for these reasons that I decided to apply for a postdoctoral fellowship at the HSE in St. Petersburg, which has an especially strong reputation for examining Russian and Soviet history from multi-ethnic and nationality perspectives.

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What is your academic and professional background and how has that brought you to HSE?

It all began with my family history. I am a dual citizen of Armenia and the US, but I was born in America. My father is an Armenian immigrant who came to Cleveland, Ohio after arriving in America with his family from Queens, New York. My mother, whom he met while commuting to college, is of Hungarian and Slovak origin. In this context, as you can imagine, I heard all sorts of interesting stories while growing up. For example, I learned that my uncle was a college roommate with Vazgen I, the future patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church, at the University of Bucharest. It was this history, along with my own study of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experience, that led me to study Russian history at the university level. In the end, I earned a BA from John Carroll University, an MLIS from Kent State University, an MA from the University of Michigan, and a PhD from Ohio State University. During these years, I traveled to Armenia several times, and during my time at Ohio State, I came to Russia through a Title VIII American Councils fellowship to work on my dissertation on Anastas Mikoyan and nationality policy reform in the post-Stalin USSR. Although I completed most of my archival research on my fellowship in Moscow, there were still several additional materials that I did not have a chance to check due to the fact that I had to leave Russia early because of the COVID pandemic.

After completing my PhD, I joined the history faculty of the American University of Armenia in Yerevan for one year. There I worked as a lecturer teaching the history of Armenia from ancient times to the present day, or basically from Urartu to post-Soviet Armenia. While in Yerevan, I was able to continue my research on the Stalinist repressions and rehabilitation of former political prisoners in the Armenian archives. I found some incredible materials, but I had no time to really expand my work into a book due to my ongoing teaching obligations. Moreover, I always wanted to complete my unfinished research in the Russian archives. It was for these reasons that I decided to apply for a postdoctoral fellowship at the HSE in St. Petersburg, which has an especially strong reputation for examining Russian and Soviet history from multi-ethnic and nationality perspectives. In the end, I received the fellowship, and this year, I was given the opportunity to focus on turning my work into a proper monograph.

Tell me more about the book that you have been working on.

Basically, the book is about the role of Anastas Mikoyan in nationality policy reform and de-Stalinization during the Khrushchev era of Soviet history. So, we’re talking about the post-war, post-Stalin years – the Thaw era from approximately 1953 to 1964. Mikoyan was of course the great Soviet statesman and Old Bolshevik of Armenian origin who began his career as a revolutionary in the Baku Commune under Stepan Shahumyan. Russians know him best for his role in the Soviet food industry and international diplomacy as well as being a great political survivor, who weathered every Soviet leader “from Il’ich to Il’ich, without heart attack and paralysis,” as our favorite saying goes.

However, less well-known were his major contributions to domestic reform under Khrushchev, most notably nationality policy reform and de-Stalinization. The aim was to dismantle the Stalinist system and, as Mikoyan and Khrushchev even stated, to “democratize” the Soviet Union.  Mikoyan’s contributions to nationality policy during the Thaw comprise the main focus of the book, and I argue that his initiatives represented a major departure from the state violence and centralization that characterized Stalin’s approach to nationalities. However, I also delve into Mikoyan’s role in de-Stalinization, as these reforms were very much interconnected, especially if we look at his speech in Yerevan of 11 March 1954. It was in that address that he called not only for a more flexible policy toward nationalities, but also for the rehabilitation of the poet Yeghishe Charents, a victim of Stalin’s repressions. In many ways, the speech played a key role in the early process of de-Stalinization. We’re talking two years before Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin at the XX Party Congress. 

The book will significantly add to our understanding of Soviet history during the Thaw years.  For instance, it explores Mikoyan’s leadership of the subcommittee tasked with reforming the union state during the 1960s constitutional reforms.  In this capacity, he and his fellow reformers envisioned a much more representative and devolved union, with much greater self-governance granted to the republics and autonomous units. Consequently, this work will contribute to very relevant discussions within Russia and the post-Soviet space today about the legacy of the Soviet nationality policy and the union of republics. De-Stalinization has also recently become a topic of great interest in the Russian and post-Soviet world, especially the roles of Gulag survivors in this process, notably Aleksei Snegov and Olga Shatunovskaya, both of whom were Old Bolsheviks and close allies of Mikoyan. Once my book is published in English, I plan to pursue Russian and Armenian translations. I already have some potential Russian publishers in mind.

Tell me about the sources that you used for your book.

The sources that I used for the book are varied and it was through them that I was able to meticulously reconstruct this little-known history. Among them are several documents and materials that I collected from major Russian Federal Archives in Moscow (RGANI, RGASPI, GARF, and RGALI) as well as the Armenian National Archives in Yerevan. I also received copies of rare documents from the Russian Presidential Archive and the FSB Central Archive from scholars at the society Memorial. In addition to archival sources, I also used several newspapers and numerous memoirs in both the Russian and Armenian languages. I also conducted research at several libraries in the post-Soviet space, most prominently the Russian National Library here in St. Petersburg, but also the Russian State Library and State Public Historical Library in Moscow, and the National Library of Armenia and the Fundamental Scientific Library of the Armenian Academy of Sciences in Yerevan.

How did you become interested in Russian and Soviet history?

My interest in Russia began when I was a first-year high school student back in Cleveland. It was my initial interest in Armenian history that provided an “opening” (if you will) to Russia, given that it was part of both the Russian Empire and the USSR. In fact, this factor was really quite significant – there is a big difference between (1) those states that were a direct part of the USSR as Soviet republics, from day one, and (2) those states that were members of the Warsaw Pact and basically satellites under Soviet influence. So, in a very direct way my own national background was connected to this larger experience of the history of Russia and the Soviet Union. And as a high school student, it was the history of the Russian Revolution that I found to be especially interesting, something that was encouraged by books like Jack Reed’s Ten Days That Shook the World.

What advice would you give to newcomers arriving to HSE or St. Petersburg?

Come with an open mind, expect the unexpected, and enjoy your time here. St. Petersburg is a great city of great culture, and it is a wonderful place to live, work, create, and be inspired!

Please find the full issue here.