Anastas Mikoyan, president of the Soviet Union

Anastas Mikoyan, who became president of the Soviet Union in the ‘60s, made his first visit to the US in 1936. He returned to Moscow impressed with the American workers’ standard of living, even during the Great Depression. He was especially taken with such treats as corn flakes, puffed wheat, canned food, and, above all, ice-cream. He immediately ordered the construction of a meat-canning plant to U.S. standards and set up Soviet Union’s first ice-cream factory with machinery bought from American companies. During WWII he served as the Red Army’s grand quartermaster, mobilizing the eastward retreat of factories from Moscow and Leningrad and processing delivery of Lend-Lease aid from America.  At the 1956 Twentieth Party Congress, where Khrushchev catalogued Stalin’s crimes, Anastas Mikoyan stood and delivered the first anti-Stalin speech.

Anastas Mikoyan, who became president of the Soviet Union in the ‘60s, made his first visit to the US in 1936. He returned to Moscow impressed with the American workers’ standard of living, even during the Great Depression. He was especially taken with such treats as corn flakes, puffed wheat, canned food, and, above all, ice-cream. He immediately ordered the construction of a meat-canning plant to U.S. standards and set up Soviet Union’s first ice-cream factory with machinery bought from American companies. During WWII he served as the Red Army’s grand quartermaster, mobilizing the eastward retreat of factories from Moscow and Leningrad and processing delivery of Lend-Lease aid from America.  At the 1956 Twentieth Party Congress, where Khrushchev catalogued Stalin’s crimes, Anastas Mikoyan stood and delivered the first anti-Stalin speech.