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.
History of the Soviet Union
The history of the Soviet Union between 1927 and 1953 covers the period of the Second World War and of victory against Nazi Germany while the USSR remained under the firm control of Joseph Stalin. Stalin sought to destroy his political rivals while transforming Soviet society with aggressive central planning, in particular a sweeping collectivization of agriculture and a rapid development of heavy industry. Stalin's power within the party and the state was established and eventually evolved into Stalin's cult of personality, Soviet secret-police and the mass-mobilization. The Communist Party were Stalin's major tools in molding the Soviet society. Stalin's brutal methods in achieving his goals, which included party purges, political repression of the general population, and forced collectivization, led to millions of deaths: in Gulag labor camps, during the man-made famine, and during forced resettlements of population.