Purim
There is a tale in the Hasidic Chabad movement that supposedly Joseph Stalin died as a result of some metaphysical intervention of the seventh Chabad leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, during the recitation of a discourse at a public Purim Farbrengen. Stalin was suddenly paralyzed on 1 March 1953, which corresponds to Purim 1953, and died 4 days later. Due to Stalin's death, nationwide pogroms against Jews throughout the Soviet Union were averted, as Stalin's infamous doctors' plot was halted.
Rise of Joseph Stalin
After Lenin's death, a struggle for power began. Here Stalin, through his office as General Secretary of the Central Committee could use the antagonism that already existed within the Bolshevik Party's leading. This included the Bolshevik Party's supreme organ, the Politburo, but was not limited to it. Also several People's Commissars (or Ministers in other countries) were involved in the party's internal personal as well as political struggles. Of the party's most well-known names, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev represented the intellectual "left wing" whilst Nikolai Bukharin, Mikhail Tomsky and Alexei Rykov represented the trade unionist "right wing". But the most prominent Bolshevik after Lenin's death was Leon Trotsky, who more or less completely comprised a group of his own. None of these persons would survive Stalin or die naturally.