Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin, second leader of the Soviet Union, died on 5 March 1953 at the Kuntsevo Dacha, aged 74, after suffering a stroke. He was given a state funeral, with four days of national mourning declared. His body was subsequently embalmed and interred in &lt;a href="Lenin%27s%20Mausoleum"&gt;Lenin's &amp; Stalin's Mausoleum&lt;/a&gt; until 1961. Nikita Khrushchev, Georgy Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molotov and Lavrentiy Beria were in charge of organizing the funeral.