Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin

Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin

Stalin's funeral procession on Okhotny Ryad
Date	5–9 March 1953
Location	Red Square, Moscow, Russian SFSR, USSR
Organized by	Soviet state
Participants	Nikita Khrushchev, Georgy Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lavrentiy Beria, Patriarch Alexy I, Nicholas (Yarushevich) and other Soviet, Church and foreign dignitaries
Deaths	109 – 1000+ [1]

This article is part of a series about Joseph Stalin
Personal Early life Residences Antisemitism Death and state funeral Bibliography Pre-leadership 1905 Tampere conference 1907 Tiflis bank robbery 1906 Bolshevik raid on the Tsarevich Giorgi Russian Revolution Russian Civil War Polish-Soviet War Rise to power Leader of the Soviet Union Tenure First five-year plan 1930–1933 famine Great Purge Death dates of victims World War II Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact Tehran Conference Yalta Conference Potsdam Conference 1946–1947 famine Excess mortality in the Soviet Union Political ideology Stalinism Comparison to Nazism Marxism–Leninism atheism Works Poetry "Anarchism or Socialism?" "Marxism and the National Question" "Foundations of Leninism" "Dizzy with Success" "Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia" "Ten Blows" speech Alleged 19 August 1939 speech Falsifiers of History Stalin Note The History of the Communist Party 1936 Soviet Constitution Dialectical and Historical Materialism Order No. 227 Order No. 270 "Marxism and Problems of Linguistics" Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR Legacy Cult of personality Neo-Stalinism De-Stalinization Anti-Stalinist left Awards and honours Eponymous places Statues Black Ribbon Day
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Joseph Stalin, second leader of the Soviet Union, died on 5 March 1953 at his Kuntsevo Dacha after suffering a stroke, at age 74. He was given a state funeral in Moscow on 9 March, with four days of national mourning declared. On the day of the funeral, of the hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens visiting the capital to pay their respects, at least 109 were later acknowledged to have died in a human crush.^[1][2]

Stalin's body was embalmed and interred in Lenin's Mausoleum until 1961, when it was moved to the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. The members of Stalin's inner circle in charge of organizing his funeral were Nikita Khrushchev, then-head of the Moscow branch of the Communist Party; Lavrentiy Beria, head of the NKVD; Georgy Malenkov, the chairman of the Presidium; and Vyacheslav Molotov, previously the Soviet Union's Minister of Foreign Affairs.