Grigori Arutinov (known as Grigor Harutiunian in Armenian) was the first secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia for sixteen years (1937-1953), the longest tenure in the history of Soviet Armenia, coinciding with the Stalinist repression and World War II.
Arutinov was born in Telavi, in eastern Georgia, on November 7, 1900. He was admitted to the local Russian gymnasium in 1911 and joined the Bolshevik party in 1919.
After the establishment of Soviet power in Georgia (1921), he became the head of the propaganda department of the Telavi district committee of the Communist Party. He studied at the Karl Marx Institute of National Economy in Moscow (1922–1924). Then he was recalled to Georgia and held various positions in the Communist Party bureaucracy until he became secretary of the party committee of the city of Tbilisi in 1934.
Laurentiy Beria, his boss within the Georgian party structure, recommended him to become first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Armenia. He was elected to the position at an extraordinary plenary session of the Central Committee on September 15, 1937. Eight days later, his predecessor, Amatuni Amatuni, was arrested and later shot. Arutinov had never lived in Armenia nor did he know the Armenian language.
The repression continued during the first two years of Arutinov’s tenure. Khoren I, Catholicos of All Armenians, was assassinated on April 6, 1938. On August 4, 1938, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Armenia passed a resolution to close the monastery of Holy Etchmiadzin and eliminate the Catholicosate of All Armenians, but the resolution was not approved by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
During Arutinov’s time, despite the huge loss of Armenian soldiers in World War II and the economic setback, Armenia enjoyed considerable agricultural and industrial expansion, particularly in Yerevan. The National Academy of Sciences was founded in 1943.
In November 1945, Arutinov made an unsuccessful appeal to Joseph Stalin to attach the autonomous region of Mountainous Karabagh (Artsakh) to Armenia. In early 1946, he also made a call to return the lands of Western Armenia to Soviet Armenia. In 1946-1948, about 100,000 Armenians emigrated from different countries of the Diaspora to Armenia. However, some 12,000 people, mostly from those who had emigrated to Armenia, were resettled by force to the region of Altai, in Siberia in 1949 by orders of the Ministry of State Security of the Soviet Union.
Arutinov’s association with Beria put him under fierce criticism after the latter was arrested in June 1953. After Beria was tried and executed on November 5, 1953, on November 28, Arutinov was removed by the plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Armenia from his post of first secretary and replaced by Suren Tovmasian.
His fall into disgrace was followed by his appointment as chairman of a collective farm (sovkhoz). He died of a heart attack in Tbilisi on November 9, 1957.