Born to a peasant family, Kalinin worked as a metal worker in Saint Petersburg and took part in the 1905 Russian Revolution as an early member of the Bolsheviks.

Kalinin remained the titular head of state of the Soviet Union after the rise of Joseph Stalin, with whom he enjoyed a privileged relationship, but held little real power or influence.

Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin was born on 19 November 1875 to a peasant family of ethnic Russian origin in the village of Verkhnyaya Troitsa (Верхняя Троица), Tver Governorate, Russia.

The following year, he was arrested, imprisoned for 10 months, then exiled to the Caucasus,[5] and found work as a craftsman at the Tbilisi railway depot, where he met Sergei Alliluyev, the father of Joseph Stalin's second wife.

In the same year, he joined the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP, headed by Vladimir Lenin, and was on the staff of the Central Union of Metal Workers.

In November 1916, during World War I, while he was again working in a factory in St Petersburg, Kalinin was arrested again and was due to be deported to Siberia, but was freed during the February Revolution of 1917.

[6] 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.

[6] When Yakov Sverdlov died in March 1919 from influenza,[9][10][11] Kalinin replaced him as President of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the titular head of state of Soviet Russia.

The lowly social origins were widely publicised in the official press, which habitually referred to Kalinin as the "All-Union Elder" (Всесоюзный староста), a term harking back to the village community, in conjunction with his role as titular head of state.

"[14] On 5 March 1940, six members of the Politburo – Kalinin, Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Kliment Voroshilov, and Anastas Mikoyan – signed an order to execute 25,700 Polish "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries" (Polish intelligentsia, priests, and military officers) kept at camps and prisons in occupied western Ukraine and Belarus,[15][16] ultimately leading to the Katyn massacre.

According to the Russian writer, Roy Medvedev, "on the pretext of protecting Kalinin, Stalin kept him under virtual house arrest for a long time, with NKVD agents constantly in his apartment.

But gradually, groaning and resisting, he turned first against me, then against Zinoviev, and finally, with even greater reluctance, against Rykov, Bukharin and Tomsky, with whom he was more closely connected because of his moderate views.

[18]Kalinin was unable to protect his wife, Ekaterina Kalinina, who was critical of Stalin's policies and was arrested on 25 October 1938 on charges of being a "Trotskyist".

[19] Although her husband was the chair of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (1938–46), she was tortured in Lefortovo Prison and on 22 April 1939, she was sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment in a labour camp.