Ioannisian, Ashot Gareginovich

Born June 5(17), 1887, in Shusha, Azerbaijan. Soviety historian; academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR (1960). Member of the Communist Party since 1906.

Ioannisian was an active participant in the Caucasian revolutionary movement. He was a professor at the Lazarev Institute in Moscow (1918–19), the University of Yerevan (1921–26), and the Institute of Nationalities of the USSR (1929–34). In 1920–21 he served as people’s commissar of education in Armenia, and during 1922–27 he was first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Armenia. In 1936–37, Ioannisian was the deputy director of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and became a senior scientific associate of the institute in 1954. His major works deal with the history of popular movements and political ideas of the Armenian people (Nalbandian and His Time, vols. 1–2, 1955–56; and Essays on the History of Armenian Liberation Ideology, books 1–2, 1957–59).