Stepan Anastasovich Mikoyan: An Autobiography

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Summary: It was many years ago, and it's true.!
Review: An amassing Man, Unbelievable life, Fantastic book. You must read it

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Summary: A GREAT TEST PILOT, SCHOLAR & GENTLEMAN
Review: The basic facts about General Mikoyan's life are already recorded in this review section: I will therefore concentrate on other aspects of this very remarkable and admirable book. Curiously, the first word about it that comes to my mind is: refinement. This is the work not only of a high ranking officer but of someone who is clearly a scholar and a gentleman(while he wrote many papers on flight stability and a thesis on problems of flight at high angles of attack, it is not surprising to learn that he is a lover of music, theater and poetry). Miraculously he has been able to interweave convincingly two rather distinct subjects of concern. First, his inevitable, if necessarily tangential, part in, and views (in a myriad details) of, the Soviet polity from Stalin to Gorbachev. Second: his long and complex life as a fighter pilot in WW2 and a test pilot and commander of Soviet aviation at the Research and Flight Test Institute of Chkalovskaya and Ahktubinsk from the war's end to the space age. I am not expert enough in either subject to tell how much is totally new here but I am certain that General Mikoyan's comments as the son of a major Soviet & Armenian leader will hold an aviation expert's interest while the author's dedication to clarifying the nature of flight in general, flight psychology and test flying in particular within Russian contexts stands an excellent chance of entrancing Sovietologists! (#)That a man so close to battle in all its aspects can give such an unwarlike impression without for one moment making one forget the astounding degree of danger characteristic of his career is due no doubt to the author's iron sense of discipline, to an extreme modesty (delightfully, he thanks the reader at the end for getting through his long book) and what I would call a generous and, yes, diplomatic objectivity characteristic of all his observations. His criticism of many things in aviation as in politics is there but never ponderous. His disappointments (in the matter of fighter pilot achievement in WW2 or in that of awards - modified eventually by the gold star of Hero of the Soviet Union) are recorded but never dwelt on. His relations - to many young friends whose parents were purged; to a beloved and admired but clearly difficult father whose cause he warmly defends (I now certainly want to read Anastas Mikoyan's Memoirs); to various politicos of the era; to various colleagues in aviation design, procurement and testing; to the relative merits of Russian and "enemy" equipment (much here on "borrowing," copying and adaptation of the other side's achievements); above all to his fellow pilots, are sketched in with a light and deeply human touch. It seems very clear that, despite his family relation to his uncle Artem's firm, the Mikoyan Design Bureau, his professional judgements for the Air Force were as rigorously impartial as possible: we hear of the merits and demerits of planes from Polikarpov, MiG, Sukhoi, Yakovlev, Ilyushin, Tupolev - whose quality was to govern the fates of huge numbers of young people. But, always, it is to his good fortune as a flyer; his technical expertise as pilot, engineer and commander and his tenacious love of his chosen life that he returns. All of this against a background, revealed especially in the closing chapters, of the devastating losses suffered by this cadre of mostly young,underpaid (in relation to civilian test pilots),hardworking and dedicated experts. Mikoyan's detailed analysis of Yuri Gagarin's fatal crash is one of a great many. (#)The translation, by the author's daughter Aschen, is extraordinarily readable: one forgets completely that this is not written in English: an astonishing achievement given the amount of technical information to be imparted.For correction in future editions,however, one minuscule exception proving the rule: "Bourges" airport throughout should surely have been "le Bourget"? (#)Hard to know if General Mikoyan will write more - I would hope so. It would be most interesting to read him in detail about post-Perestroika Russia and the relative values of Soviet and post-Soviet times. We are becoming fortunate: after the work of Wagner, von Hardesty, Gunston and Duffy amongst others, we are getting closer to the practical feel of Soviet aviation history, especially during the "Great Patriotic War." Joining, for example, Igor Kaberov's "Swastika in the Gunsight,"Anne Noggle's "A Dance with Death:Soviet Airwomen of WW2" and L.L.Kerber's "Stalin's Aviation Gulag: Tupolev & the Purge Era," Stepan Mikoyan's book puts us brilliantly and exhilaratingly into the catbird's seat on what should, alas, never have been an "other side."