SOVIET LEADERS

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 March 1946, Page 8

SOVIET LEADERS

MR. KALININ RETIRES

LONDON, March 20.

The Moscow radio has announced that the Supreme Soviet has appointed Mr. Stalin Chairman of the Council of Ministers (Prime Minister) and Minister of the Armed Forces. The title of Prime Minister is derived from last week’s change in the name of the Council of People's Commissars to Council of Ministers. The radio said that Mr. Molotov had been appointed Deputy-Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Kalinin has asked to be relieved of the post of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, for health reasons. He is succeeded by Mr. Nikolai Shvernik, who until now has been First Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Soviet and Chairman of the Council of Nationalities.

Mr. M. I. Kalinin, who is 71. years of age, has been chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet since 1937. His revolutionary activity dated from 1895,- when, as a metal worker in the Putilov factory in St. Petersburg he joined the “Union for struggle for the freedom of the working class.” He did party work in St. Petersburg, Tiflis, Reval (Tallinn), and Moscow, and was several times imprisoned and exiled. In 1923 he became president of the Central Executive Committee of the R.S.F.S.R. (Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic) and the U.S.S.R.

His successor, Mr. Shvernik, is 58 years 'of age, and has been a Communist Party member, since 1902. He was a membei' of party committees in different parts of Russia before the Revolution. He was general secretary of the All-Union Soviet of Trade Unions from 1930 to 1944, and led a trade union delegation to Britain in 1942. He was a member of the Anglo-Soviet Trade Union Committee, and attended the British T.U.C. conference in 1943..