On 1 March 1953 after an all-night movie and dinner session with his top advisers, Joseph Stalin suffered a stroke and collapsed. He died four days later.
Josef Stalin had led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death. His regime was responsible for mass repression and man-made famine which resulted in the suffering and deaths of millions of Soviet citizens.
On 1 March 1953, Stalin’s staff found him semi-conscious on the bedroom floor of his Kuntsevo Dacha. He was moved onto a couch and remained there for three days, during which he was hand-fed using a spoon and given various medicines and injections. Stalin’s condition continued to deteriorate, and he died on 5 March. An autopsy revealed that he had died of a cerebral haemorrhage, and that his cerebral arteries had been severely damaged by atherosclerosis. Stalin’s death was announced on 6 March; his body was embalmed, and then displayed in Moscow’s House of Unions for three days. The crowds coming to view the body were so large and disorganised that many people were killed in a crowd crush. At the funeral on 9 March, attended by hundreds of thousands, Stalin was laid to rest in Lenin’s Mausoleum in Red Square.
The film, ‘The Death of Stalin’, depicts the internal social and political power struggle among the members of the Soviet Politburo following the death of leader Joseph Stalin in 1953.
