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.
Solomon Lozovsky
In 1943, the actor Solomon Mikhoels and others began pushing for the creation of a Jewish homeland within the borders of the USSR. Lozovsky advised that the best location would be Crimea, and helped Mikhoels draft a written appeal to the Kremlin in February 1944. After the creation of the state of Israel, Stalin interpreted this talk as a Jewish conspiracy, and ordered the police to organise a show trial with Lozovsky as the main defendant. He was arrested on 26 January 1949, and tortured. Despite incredible pressure and despite being over 70 years old, Lozovsky never admitted his guilt or accused others. The closed trial lasted for two and one-half months, during which Lozovsky's testimony "shines out of this primordial darkness as the most remarkable and moving oration of dignity and courage in all of Stalin's trials." The skill with which he destroyed the prosecution caused the judge, Alexander Cheptsov, to interrupt the trial for a week, twice, to ensure and appeal for the investigation to be reopened - something that never happened in any other political trial during the Stalin years. Even after he had carried out his instruction to return a verdict of guilty, on 18 July 1952, he refused to order that the death sentences be carried out immediately, he forwarded an appeal for clemency to Stalin, which was rejected. Lozovsky was executed on August 12, 1952, together with thirteen other members of Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, an event known as the Night of the Murdered Poets. He was the last and oldest Old Bolshevik to be murdered on Stalin's orders. The stenographic report of the trial was published only in 1994 and in a highly edited form.