Both brothers were famous for different reasons. Artem Mikoyan was a famous aircraft designer and the younger brother of Anastas Mikoyan, the statesman whose career encompassed fifty years of the Soviet regime.

Artem (Anoushavan) Mikoyan was born in the village of Sanahin (Lori, in Eastern Armenia), on August 5, 1905. He also had one other brother and two sisters. He started his elementary studies at the village school, and, after his father’s death, his mother sent him to Tiflis, where he graduated from a local Armenian school.

In 1923 he moved to Rostov-on-the Don, along his elder brother Anastas. He took a work as a machine tool-operator, but a year later he moved to Moscow, working in a similar position in the “Dynamo” factory until 1928 before being conscripted into military service.