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.
Rise of Joseph Stalin
Stalin eventually turned on Yezhov. He appointed Yezhov Commissar of Water Transport in April 1938 (a similar thing had happened to Yezhov's predecessor, Yagoda, shortly before he was fired). Stalin began ordering the executions of Yezhov's protégés in the NKVD. Politburo members also started to openly condemn the excesses of the NKVD under Yezhov's leadership, all of which gave the signal that Yezhov was falling from Stalin's favour. Yezhov eventually suffered a nervous breakdown and resigned as NKVD chief on 23 November 1938. Yezhov was replaced as NKVD chief by Lavrentiy Beria. Yezhov was executed on 4 February 1940.