On 1 March 1953, Stalin's staff found him semi-conscious on the bedroom floor of his Volynskoe dacha. He had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. He was moved onto a couch and remained there for three days. He was hand-fed using a spoon, given various medicines and injections, and leeches were applied to him. Svetlana and Vasily were called to the dacha on 2 March; the latter was drunk and angrily shouted at the doctors, resulting in him being sent home. Stalin died on 5 March 1953. According to Svetlana, it had been "a difficult and terrible death". An autopsy revealed that he had died of a cerebral hemorrhage and that he also suffered from severe damage to his cerebral arteries due to atherosclerosis. It is possible that Stalin was murdered. Beria has been suspected of murder, although no firm evidence has ever appeared.
Stalin's death was announced on 6 March. The body was embalmed, and then placed on display in Moscow's House of Unions for three days. Crowds were such that a crush killed around 100 people. The funeral involved the body being laid to rest in Lenin's Mausoleum in Red Square on 9 March; hundreds of thousands attended. That month featured a surge in arrests for "anti-Soviet agitation" as those celebrating Stalin's death came to police attention. The Chinese government instituted a period of official mourning for Stalin's death.
Joseph Stalin in an authorised image taken in 1937 and used for state publicity purposes
