Russian revolutionaries and leaders Stalin, Lenin, and Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin at the Congress of the Russian Communist Party. Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (December 18, 1878 - March 5, 1953) was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 and later held the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (April 22, 1870 - January 21, 1924) was a Russian Marxist revolutionary, communist politician, Russian statesman and Marxist theoretician. Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin (November 19, 1875 - June 3, 1946) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and the nominal head of state of Russia and later of the Soviet Union, from 1919 to 1946. From 1926 he was a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, where he was one of the inner circle of party leaders around Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.