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.
The Death of Stalin
In the USSR in 1953, General Secretary Joseph Stalin is listening to a concert on the radio and orders that a recording of it be delivered to him. The concert has to be hurriedly repeated and recorded, but the pianist, Maria Yudina, hides a note to Stalin in the sleeve of the record, saying he has ruined the country. As Stalin reads the note in his dacha, he suffers a cerebral haemorrhage and becomes paralysed. The members of the Central Committee are alerted. The first to arrive are Interior Ministry (NKVD) head Lavrentiy Beria, who discovers Yudina's note, and Deputy General Secretary Georgy Malenkov. As Malenkov panics, Beria encourages him to take the leadership, hoping to use him as a puppet.