Mikoyan, in a description by Simon Sebag-Montefiore, was "slim, circumspect, wily and industrious". He has been described as an intelligent man, understanding English, having learned German on his own by translating the German version of Karl Marx's "Das Kapital" into Russian. Unlike many others, Mikoyan was not afraid to get into a heated argument with Stalin. "One was never bored with Mikoyan", Artyom Sergeev notes, while Khrushchev called him a true cavalier. However, Khrushchev warned of trusting "that shrewd fox from the east." In a close conversation with Vyacheslav Molotov and Nikolai Bukharin, Stalin referred to Mikoyan as a "duckling in politics"; he noted, however, that if Mikoyan ever took a serious shot he would improve. Mikoyan had so many children, five boys and the two sons of the late Bolshevik leader Stepan Shahumyan, that he and his wife faced financial problems. His wife Ashkhen would borrow money from Politburo wives who had fewer children. If Mikoyan had discovered this he would, according to his children, have become furious.