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.
Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin
On 6 March, the coffin with Stalin's body was displayed at the Hall of Columns in the House of the Unions and it stayed there for three days. On 9 March, the body of Stalin was delivered to Red Square to be interred in Lenin's Mausoleum where he lay in state until 1961. Speeches were delivered by Khrushchev, Malenkov, Molotov, and Beria. After the speeches, pallbearers carried the coffin to the mausoleum. As Stalin's body was being put into the mausoleum, a moment of silence was observed nationwide at 12:00 pm (Moscow time). As bells of the Kremlin tower chimed the hour, marking the interment of Stalin's coffin, sirens and horns wailed nationwide along with the 21-gun salute which was fired within the precincts of the Kremlin. Similar observance also held in other Warsaw Pact countries alongside with China, Mongolia and North Korea. Right after the silence ended, a military band played the Soviet State Anthem. After the anthem played, a military parade of the Moscow Garrison was held in Stalin's honor. In the public's efforts to pay their respects to Stalin's casket, a number of people died as they were crushed and trampled by the amassed crowd. Khrushchev provided an estimate that 109 people died in the crowd.