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
Rise of Joseph Stalin Stalin could now rather easily send Zinoviev and Kamenev to Gulag (thus far just briefly), and by 1929 also Bukharin, Tomsky and Rykov found themselves played by Stalin. All struggles for power was over. Stalin was now the autocratic ruler of the entire Soviet Union. Millions of Russians and people of other ethnic origin inside the Soviet Union had been killed during the Russian Civil War, through starvation and in other conflicts, but the bloodbath had thus far not reached within the Bolshevik Party. Not even by 1929 did Stalin think of having Trotsky or any other possible political opponent