Stalin Death

As he aged, Stalin became increasingly obsessed about death and the possibility of assassination.

He would sleep here in a different room every night.

Stalin would order fresh sets of bed linen to be left out for him to make the bed himself.

Stalin Death
Stalin Death

He always insisted on checking underneath his bed before retiring.

Stalin’s favorite bedroom at Kholodnaya Rechka had one wall built against the rock face.

He was more interested in security than the sea view and would bring with him to the dacha an entourage of as many as 700 guards.

It was at Kuntsevo Dacha, near Moscow, that Stalin had his fatal stroke on the night of 28 February–1 March 1953.

Five days before his death

From 28 February onwards to next five days until his demise a grotesque black comedy played out.

Due to sheer and paralyzing terror of Stalin, those who witnessed Stalin’s final hours didn’t intervene.

For the last few years before his death, Stalin had become increasingly reclusive and paranoid.

He spending more and more time at his dacha at Kuntsevo. Guard dogs patrol the area outside the Dacha.

His most trustworthy servants closely monitored his food and medicines.

On the evening of 28 February, after watching a film at the Kremlin, Stalin, as was his habit, returned to his dacha with his closest cronies from the Politburo—Lavrenty Beria, Georgy Malenkov, Marshal Bulganin, and Nikita Khrushchev.

He spent the rest of the night drinking Georgian wine until 4 A.M.

The following day Stalin did not emerge from his room. The hours passed, the lights came on in his room at 6:30 P.M., but his servants were still too frightened to enter uninvited.

After hovering indecisively outside Stalin’s door, a bodyguard finally plucked up the courage to open it later that evening and found Stalin lying on the floor, semiconscious, soaked in his own urine.

His bodygaurds summoned the Politburo memeber from the Kremlin, but they were reluctant to intervene.

Chief of secret police Beria’s suggested that the snoring noises indicated that he was “sleeping peacefully”.

They left without ordering medical help for Stalin, who had now been lifted onto a sofa.

Doctor attempt to save Stalin

Doctors were finally summoned the following morning and, overcoming their terror (they were visibly shaking), examined the prostrate leader and confirmed that he had suffered a brain hemorrhage.

The reluctance of anyone to rush to Stalin’s aid his death.

Lazar Kaganovich’s biographer claimed that the Politburo had conspired to tamper with Stalin’s anticoagulant medication in order to precipitate his physical decline.

Whether or not this is true, Stalin’s entourage ensured the inevitability of his death by not taking prompt medical action.

Eventually, Politburo harnessed the entire Moscow Academy of Medical Sciences in the attempt to save Stalin’s life.

At Kuntsevo the doctors made futile attempts at treatment with leeches and various injections.

Dr. Galina Chesnokova, who specialized in brain surgery spent three almost sleepless days at Stalin’s bedside in an attempt to revive the dying man.

Final moment before Stalin Death

Daily radio broadcasts to an anxious nation reported every fluctuation in the leader’s physical condition.

At this point the doctor thought that Stalin might die anytime.

As everyone gathered around to watch the death agony, Stalin, prostrate and unable to do more than make occasional incoherent sounds, never spoke again.

At the last moment, Stalin opened his eyes and gave those surrounding him a terrifying look.

At ten minutes to ten on the evening of 5 March he finally died “a difficult and terrible death,” in the words of his daughter Svetlana.

Reaction of Russian People To Stalin Death

Doctor immediately embalmed Stalin’s body in the special laboratory, set up in the Lenin Mausoleum to maintain Lenin’s corpse.

He then lay in state in the Hall of Columns in Moscow.

The nation at large was numb with shock and people wept on the streets.

Many thousands of the grief-stricken people tried to get into Moscow to pay their last respects that the authorities sealed off the city.

Tragedy followed when stamped crushed 500 people to death as the vast crowd surged to file past the corpse.

On the day of Stalin’s funeral, 9 March, the Soviet Union stood still.

Death of Stalin dealt a devastating blow.

For the Russian people it was a devastating blow, the loss of the nation’s father figure.

More frightening still was the thought of the future without him.

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