Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin
On 5 March 1953, at 21:50 EET, Joseph Stalin, the second leader of the Soviet Union, died at the Kuntsevo Dacha aged 74 after suffering a stroke. After four days of national mourning, Stalin was given a state funeral and then buried in Lenin's Mausoleum on 9 March. Nikita Khrushchev, Georgy Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molotov and Lavrentiy Beria were in charge of organizing the funeral.
Kuntsevo District
Soviet leaders started to settle in Kuntsevo in the 1920s. Joseph Stalin instructed his architect, Miron Merzhanov, to build him a dacha on the bank of the Moskva River and moved there in 1934. With his move other members of the Soviet elite had their dachas built in the surroundings. Stalin conducted much of his business from his "Blizhnyaya Dacha" () ("nearby dacha"). It was heavily protected and included a double-perimeter fence, camouflaged 30-millimeter antiaircraft guns, and a security force of three hundred NKVD special troops. Stalin died at the dacha on March 5, 1953.