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
History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Podgorny as Chairman of the Presidium and Alexei Kosygin as Premier of the Soviet Union. Brezhnev was able to consolidate power to become the leading figure, but he was never able to gather as much powers as Stalin and Khrushchev had done previously. At the 23rd Congress of the CPSU held in 1966, Brezhnev was able to have himself declared General Secretary of the party, reviving a title that had not existed since Stalin. The Presidium also reverted to its previous name of Politburo. While Kosygin attempted to pursue a policy of favouring light industry and consumer good production over