Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin (Russian: Михаи́л Ива́нович Кали́нин), known familiarly by Soviet citizens as "Kalinych," was a Bolshevik revolutionary and the nominal head of state 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.