Political Career in Russia
Kalinin joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1898, the year of its foundation. He got to know Stalin through the Alliluyev family.
During the Russian Revolution of 1905, Kalinin worked for the Bolshevik party and on the staff of the Central Union of Metal Workers. He was later active on behalf of the RSDLP in Tiflis, Georgia (now Tbilisi), Reval, Estonia (now Tallinn), and Moscow. In April 1906 he was a delegate at the 4th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.
Kalinin was an early and devoted adherent of the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP, headed by Vladimir Lenin. He was a delegate to the 1912 Bolshevik Party Conference held in Prague, where he was elected an alternate member of the governing Central Committee and sent to work inside Russia. He did not become a full member because he was suspected of being an Okhrana agent (the real agent was Roman Malinovsky, a full member).
Kalinin was arrested for his political activities in 1916 and freed during the February Revolution of 1917 which overthrew the tsarist state. During this period, Kalinin joined the Petrograd Bolshevik committee and assisted in the organization of the party daily Pravda, newly legalized by the post-Tsarist regime.
In April 1917 Kalinin, like many other Bolsheviks, advocated conditional support for the Provisional Government in cooperation with the Menshevik faction of the RSDLP — a position at odds with that of Lenin. He continued to oppose an armed uprising to overthrow the government of Alexander Kerensky throughout that summer.
In the elections held for the Petrograd City Duma in the fall of 1917, Kalinin was chosen as mayor of the city, which he administered during and after the Bolshevik Revolution of 7 November.
In 1919 Kalinin was elected a member of the governing Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party as well as a candidate member of the Politburo. He was promoted to full membership on the Politburo in January 1926, a position which he retained until his death in 1946.
When Yakov Sverdlov died in March 1919 Kalinin replaced him as President of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the titular head of state of Soviet Russia. The name of this position was changed to Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR in 1922 and to Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in 1938. Kalinin continued to hold the post without interruption until his retirement at the end of World War II.
In 1920, Kalinin attended the Second World Congress of the Communist International in Moscow as part of the Russian delegation. He was seated on the presidium rostrum and took an active part in the debates.
Read more about this topic: Mikhail Kalinin
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