Yakov Nikitayi Zarobyan (; 25 September 1908 – 11 April 1980) was a Soviet Armenian politician who served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia from 1960 to 1966.
Early life and career
Zarobyan was born in 1908 in
Artvin, then in the
Russian Empire, now in
Turkey.
Together with his family, he moved to
Rostov-on-Don with the onset of World War I. In 1925, he moved to
Kharkiv and became a factory worker. In 1932, he joined the Communist Party and became the party secretary of the main Kharkov factory in 1939. In 1940, he became the secretary of the Stalin District of Kharkov and remained in that post until the start of the Great Patriotic War when the Germans captured the city. An active participant in the war, Zarobyan served as deputy secretary for the defense industry of the
Omsk Oblast from 1942 to 1947. After the war, he became the third secretary of the Omsk Oblast.
Career in Armenia
In 1949, Zarobyan moved to Soviet Armenia and held various positions in the republic's leadership, including Second Secretary of the Yerevan City Committee (1950–1952), Secretary of the Central Committee for Industry (1953–1958), First Deputy Premier (1958–1960), and Second Secretary (1960).
In 1960, he succeeded
Suren Tovmasyan as Armenia's First Secretary and oversaw the latter half of the
Khrushchev Thaw in the republic.
As Armenia's first secretary, Zarobyan expanded relations with the Armenian diaspora,
In 1966, Zarobyan was made Soviet Deputy Minister for Electrification, effectively a demotion, and was succeeded by Anton Kochinyan. Although Zarobyan's dismissal is often associated with the 1965 Yerevan demonstrations, Yeghishe Astsatryan attributed his departure more to "backstage Soviet political intrigues." Zarobyan died in Moscow in 1980 and was buried in Yerevan. The Arpa–Sevan tunnel was named in his honor in 2010.
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