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.
Berta Daniel
One member of the intelligence community who had not fallen foul of the Stalin purges was Elena Stasova, with whom Daniel had worked at the IRH in the 1920s. Joseph Stalin died in March 1953, and in October 1953 Daniel wrote a letter to Stasova which the latter received, even though it was simply addressed to "Elena Stasova, Moscow city". It appears that it was as a result of their ensuing communication that on 28 January 1957 was posthumously rehabilitated by the appropriate Moscow military tribunal. A couple of months later, on 26 March 1957, Berta Daniel, still very much alive, was rehabilitated by the same Moscow tribunal.