Ashot Hovhannisyan

Ashot Garegini Hovhannisian (; , Ashot Gareginovich Ioannisyan; June 17, 1887 – June 30, 1972) was an Armenian Marxist historian, theorist and Communist official.

Life and career Early life Hovhannisian was born on 17 June 1887 in the city Shusha in the Shusha uezd of the Elizavetpol Governorate of the Russian Empire.

Soviet period After the Sovietization of Armenia, Hovhannisian was appointed Minister of Education. In that position, he declared Armenian the official language of Soviet Armenia, fought illiteracy, established a government-run publishing house and Cultural-Educational Institute, organized Yerevan State University, Cultural-Historical Institute, Revolutionary Museum of Yerevan. With Alexander Miasnikian, he persuaded prominent Armenian men of sciences and arts from abroad to move to Soviet Armenia. He taught Leninism at Yerevan State University between 1921 and 1927.

In July 1927 he moved to Leningrad, where he worked at the State Public Library (now National Library of Russia) for a year, then was invited to work in Moscow, at the Marx–Engels–Lenin Institute in 1928–31. Between 1931 and 1934 he was vice-director of the Institute of Nationalities of the USSR and in 1934–35 at the State Academy for the History of Material Culture as head of the Moscow branch and in 1935–37 worked as vice-director of the USSR Institute of History. That same year, he began work at the Institute of History of the Armenian Academy of Sciences as a senior researcher and headed the new history department from 1961. Gerard Libaridian noted that Hovhannisian "dominated Soviet Armenian historiography until his death, and in some respects, even after." A Soviet dissident publication noted that "ather than as a political figure, he is better known as an intellectual possessing a high degree of originality, which is a rare phenomenon within the ranks of the Communist Party."

Hovhannisian became a full member (academician) of the Armenian Academy of Sciences in 1960.

Awards Hovhannisian was named an Honored Scientist of the Armenian SSR in 1961,