Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin 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. 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
Communist Party of the Soviet Union armed conflict. Rather, Stalin argued that the Soviet Union should in the meantime pursue peaceful coexistence and invite foreign investment in order to develop the country's economy and build socialism in one country. Ultimately, Stalin gained the greatest support within the party, and Trotsky, who was increasingly viewed as a collaborator with outside forces in an effort to depose Stalin, was isolated and subsequently expelled from the party and exiled from the country in 1928. Stalin's policies henceforth would later become collectively known as Stalinism. In 1925, the name of the party was changed to the All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks),