On March 5, 1953, at 74 years of age, Josef Stalin, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and chairman of the Council of Ministers, died at his dacha at Kuntsevo outside of Moscow. One of history's most notorious mass murders, a note of farce accompanied Stalin's own death.
Born Iosif Vissarionocich Dzhugashvili in Georgia in 1878, Stalin became a communist revolutionary prior to World War I and soon became close with Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. Stalin's brutish behavior made him an ideal attack dog for Lenin in establishing the Soviet regime in 1917, and the elder communist came to lean on the Georgian. Before Lenin passed away from natural causes in 1924, however, he warned his successors not to let Stalin become a Soviet leader. Lenin felt the other man was “too rude” to govern effectively.
In charge of the Soviet bureaucracy, and appointing those loyal to him to important positions, Stalin created a power base that allowed him to outmaneuver other potential rivals for power in the USSR. Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Bukharin, all potential successors to Lenin, were soon swept aside, either exiled or executed as Stalin tightened his grip over the Soviet Union.
The late 1920s and early 1930s saw the introduction of the First Five Year Plan, a massive economic program designed by Stalin to fully industrialize the Soviet Union. Using Ukrainian grain to pay for the industrialization, millions of Ukrainians starved to death in an entirely avoidable man-made famine. Millions more perished in Soviet gulags and work programs throughout the 1930s. In 1938, Stalin, fearing plots against his regime, unleashed his great purge, arresting, imprisoning and executing tens of thousands of Communist Party officials and army officers. Ironically, the Soviet industry that Stalin created was a major factor in the USSR withstanding and ultimately defeating Nazi Germany's invasion in 1941.
While many Soviets, particularly Ukrainians, had reason to hate Stalin, his leadership in World War II (or as it is known in Russia to this day, “The Great Patriotic War”), conferred upon him a new legitimacy, and many Soviet citizens held the leader in high regard, if not outright adoration. Yet Stalin remained paranoid, believing that assassins and saboteurs existed around every corner and under every rock.
After World War II, many believed that the paranoia of the 1930s was over, and for a time things seemed to normalize in the USSR. In 1952, however, Stalin again launched a major campaign intended to prompt another purge of the Communist Party. This time, however, Stalin targeted a profession — doctors. Additionally, with many Jewish Soviet citizens expressing desire to emigrate to the newly formed state of Israel, Stalin began to move against the Jews as well.
In speeches to the Politburo and in the pages of the Soviet newspaper Pravda, doctors and Jews were attacked as being disloyal and potentially dangerous. One Jan. 13, 1953, editorial headline read: “Evil Spies and Murderers Masked as Medical Professors.”
On the evening of Feb. 28, Stalin invited several of his close political associates to his dacha to watch a movie. Georgy Malenkov, Nikita Khrushchev, Nikolai Bulganin, and secret policeman Lavrenti Beria attended. The evening included a feast and heavy drinking, and the party broke up around four in the morning. All the guests later recalled that Stalin had looked perfectly healthy.
The next morning, March 1, Stalin's bodyguards felt concerned when the leader didn't stir. A long-standing order stated that they were not to enter his bedroom unless called for, and there was only silence from the other side of the door. Around 6:30 in the evening a light came on in the bedroom, and the guards believed that Stalin had merely slept late. Still, there was no other activity from the bedroom.
A few hours later a courier arrived with a package. The ranking guard, Pavel Lozgachëv, decided he would risk the leader's wrath and entered the bedroom with the package. Lozgachëv found that Stalin had apparently suffered a stroke and had fallen to the floor, conscious but unable to move.
In the book, “Stalin,” biographer Robert Service wrote, “No one dared do the most obvious thing and call a doctor. Needing an instruction from higher authority, the guards phoned Minister of State Security Sergei Ignatev in Moscow. Even Ignatev felt out of his depth and phoned Malenkov and Beria. Everyone at the dacha frantically wished to receive orders. All they did on their own initiative was to lift Stalin from the floor and move him on to his divan and place a blanket over him.”
As Politburo members began arriving and witnessing the leader in such dire straits, no one wanted to phone a doctor. For Stalin's underlings it was a bit of a no-win scenario. If they called a doctor and Stalin recovered, would he blame them for interfering and involving a member of the hated group he was now targeting? Or, if they did nothing and he recovered, would he blame then for failing to help him. Men had lost their lives in the Soviet Union for far less.
Finally, the Politburo members decided that doctors must be brought in. With Beria, the secret policeman, taking charge, Stalin's son Vasily and his daughter, Svetlana, were soon called for as well. The doctors confirmed that Stalin had had a stroke, and cleaned him up from the urine soaked state that they found him. Vasily started drinking heavily.
The next few days continued with the air of comic opera. Specialists who had been arrested and sent to Lubyanka Prison in Moscow weeks before were suddenly asked their opinions about hypothetical symptoms of a stroke, an unusual change of pace from their current routine of torture intended to produce false confessions of treason. At the dacha, or country estate, once it was clear that Stalin was not going to recover, Beria began to denounce him for his crimes, only to grovel when the Soviet leader appeared to rally.
In the book “Stalin: Breaker of Nations,” biographer Robert Conquest offers Svetlana's description of Stalin's last moments in the evening of March 5:
“For the last twelve hours the lack of oxygen became acute. His face and lips blackened as he suffered slow strangulation. The death agony was terrible. He literally choked to death as we watched. At what seemed like the very last moment, he opened his eyes and cast a glance over everyone in the room. It was a terrible glance, insane or perhaps angry, and full of death. (Then) he suddenly lifted his left hand as though he were pointing to something up above and bringing down a curse on all. The gesture was incomprehensible and full of menace.”
Thus ended the life of one of history's most notorious mass murderers. The Politburo members soon worked out a deal to share power and to transition the USSR away from the one-man rule that had characterized Stalin's regime. Beria soon took a leading role in the Soviet Union. As he ran the state's intelligence network, he had spies throughout the world. The man who took no small role in the implementation of Stalin's murders, and a serial rapist in his own right, now favored better relations with the West.
Beria's tenure as de facto leader of the Soviet Union was cut short, however, when Khrushchev and other Politburo members mounted a coup in December. Beria was arrested on charges of espionage and shot.
Svetlana defected to the United States in 1967 and died in 2011.
Cody K. Carlson holds a master's in history from the University of Utah and teaches at Salt Lake Community College. An avid player of board games, he blogs at thediscriminatinggamer.com. Email: ckcarlson76@gmail.com