Mikhaïl Kalinine

Biography

Resulting from a poor country Russian family of the area of Tver, Kalinine works with his/her father in agriculture then in factory with Saint-Pétersbourg in 1889, in the Caucasus with Reval (Tallin), with the liking of its arrests and as of its exiles. Metal-worker - it is starting from 1896 turner with the factories Poutilov - it adheres to the social democrat working Parti of Russia as of his foundation in 1898 in the faction Bolshevik partisane of the theories of Lénine.

Decree and exiled for the first time in 1899, it becomes acquainted with Stalin the following year with Tiflis, city where they militate together. A little later it takes part in the revolutionary actions of the party at the time of the Russian Révolution of 1905 in the capital. A few years later, it finds Stalin in 1912 at the Russian office of the central committee and collaborates then in the foundation of the newspaper the Pravda. Stopped in Petrograd in 1916, exiled in Eastern Siberia, it is released by the Revolution of February. He declares himself then favorable to a support critical for the provisional government and opposed to the " Theses of April " of Lénine.

At the time of the passage to the insurrection, it adopts a timer attitude. After the Revolution of October, he becomes mayor of Petrograd and one of the members of the central Executive committee (CEC), then member of the Political office of the party. The death of Sverdlov enables him to become President of the CEC, i.e. in position (nominal) of Head of the State. This choice would have been made in the name of the rural origins of Kalinine, Lénine wishing to reinforce the bonds between the working class and the farming community. At all events, it preserves this station during 23 years (if one counts starting from the creation of the the USSR and the introduction of the presidency of the Presidium of the Soviet which falls to him then), until his resignation a few months before his death.

During the civil war, it organizes the train of agitation of the Revolution of October which aims to rejoin working and country with the Reds. During all the continuation of its political career, Kalinine is member (temporary or titular) of Politburo and supports Stalin, except in 1929-1930 when it appears, very timidly, near to the right-wing opposition and reticent to collectivization and the Dékoulakisation.

His Ekaterina wife is stopped and off-set in October 1938, for critical words towards Stalin. She will be released from the Gulag only in 1946, the year of the death of her husband. Impotent to help his own wife, Kalinine is as much to answer the multiple calls to the assistance reach him of all shares, with the example of Nadejda Kroupskaïa, the wife of Lénine, it solicited also much. Its popularity is real as shows it the abundant mail which it receives from many basic Soviet citizens who a long time persisted in seeing in him a recourse. The historian Sheila Fitzpatrick mentions that between 1923 and 1935, its cabinet is the object of more than 1,5 million written and oral requests for assistance. It stresses that Kalinine, at least before the Grandes Purgings of 1937, is one of the most understanding and obliging leaders near the Soviet population.

For as much, its desire not to support the oppositions during the fight to be able it in fact, since 1928, the ally and the instrument of Stalin, this " old man bolchévique" extremely popular and inoffensive symbolizing, with, the permanence report heading of the revolutionary tradition. The March 5th 1940, Kalinine would be one of the Soviet persons in charge, following the example Kaganovitch, which without signing it, supported the order of execution of 25.700 Poles made captive by the Red Army ( Massacre of Katyń ).

Kalinine remains President of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR until its resignation the March 19th 1946, very little time before its death.

Kaliningrad

The Soviet authorities had taken practice to honor the principal leaders of the party deceased - and sometimes alive - by giving their name to cities: thus of Lénine (Leningrad, Oulianovsk), of Sverdlov (Sverdlovsk), of Dzerjinski (Dnieprodzerjinsk), of Frounze, etc the USSR having annexed after the Second world war part of old the Eastern Prussia, the capital Königsberg was famous Kaliningrad. This name since then remained to him, contrary to Tver, its birthplace, which named " Kalinin" in 1931, of alive sound, found its old toponym in 1991.

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