While in exile in Siberia Stalin contracts TB. While he survives the first bout of the disease he never fully recovers and finally dies in 1919. He is able to contribute to the October Revolution but dies before he comes into a position of major power. Stalin, at the time, was the People's Commissar of the Workers and Peasants Inspection. He was in charge of reforming the Russian economy. Instead Mikhail Kalinin was appointed in his place by Lenin. He was in instant success when compared to Stalin, and after Trotsky's rise to the office of the Soviet Premier he made huge advances in industry and agriculture thanks to Trotsky more realistic ideology and more lenient rule.