Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin amassed crowd. Khrushchev provided an estimate that 109 people died in the crowd. According to "Ogoniok", the mourners included the following foreign dignitaries: 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
First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union The First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union, also known as First Vice Premier of the Soviet Union, was the deputy head of government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR); despite the title, the office was not necessarily held by a single individual. A total of 26 individuals had held this post; 18 of them held other posts simultaneously with their First Deputy Premiership. The first officeholder was Valerian Kuibyshev, who was inaugurated in 1934 as First Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (, abbreviated Sovnarkom). Lavrentiy Beria spent