Yet Stalin had not yet passed away and Presidium members sped back to Blizhnyaya dacha where he was sinking irretrievably. They were watching their past lives flash before their eyes: the Five-Year Plans, the Great Terror and the Great Patriotic War. Stalin personified their collective career. They had been active in the consolidation of the Soviet state, its military and industrial power as well as its territorial expansion and political security. With the possible exception of Beria, they were in awe of Stalin’s intelligence and experience at the same time as they simply feared him. He had bewitched them even while traumatising them. As he lay prostrate on the divan, they could not be confident that by some superhuman effort he would not revive and return to dominate public life again. These very individuals who had sent millions to their deaths in the Gulag under Stalin’s leadership trembled at the sight of an old man, semi-conscious and inert, whose life was slipping away. To the end he held them in thrall. There was still the possibility that he might recover sufficiently, if only for a moment, to order the destruction of all of them. Even a dying Stalin was not to be trifled with.
At the dacha the tension was intense. Beria, taking charge of security, put the zone around Blizhnyaya into quarantine as a watch was kept on the patient. On the morning of 5 March he again vomited blood.20 As the doctors later discovered, he had suffered a massive stomach haemorrhage. His general health had been poor for years and his arteries were hardened. Medical staff and politicians gathered at his bedside. Svetlana was the only close family member at the dacha. Turns were taken by those present to approach his recumbent body to pay their respects. They took his hand looking for some sign of his intentions toward them. Most remarkable was the behaviour of Beria, who slobbered on Stalin’s hand in an unctuous display of personal fidelity. At 9.50 a.m. the Leader choked on his last breath. He was gone.
Some fell into each other’s arms. The distraught Svetlana took comfort in the embrace of Khrushchëv. Servants were allowed in to see the corpse. Even the Presidium members, who hours previously had been making dispositions for politics after Stalin, were affected. A whole period in their lives as well as in their country’s history had been terminated. They would not have been human if they had not been shocked by their experience. Only one person had full presence of mind. This was Beria, who behaved like an uncaged panther. No longer unctuous or doleful, he shouted: ‘Khrustalëv! The car!’21 Beria raced to the Kremlin to complete an orderly political succession in which he would play a leading role. While others consoled Svetlana or wept by Stalin’s bedside, there was much to do and Beria set the pace. Unlike Molotov and Mikoyan, he had not been named as an undesirable potential leader. The Mingrelian Affair had not been mentioned at the Central Committee and, as far as its members knew, Beria had been in Stalin’s good books to the end. The battle for the succession was under way.
The security group became the guard of honour standing by the dead Leader. A black catafalque arrived at the dacha and the guards carried him into it for transfer to the special institute where the condition of Lenin’s corpse was regularly checked and Stalin’s corpse would be prepared for the funeral. Guard commander Khrustalëv remained in charge.
At 8 p.m. on 5 March the Party Central Committee reconvened with Khrushchëv in the chair. Presidium members knew they had to convince everyone present that Stalin had died of natural causes.22 The platform was given to USSR Minister of Health A. F. Tretyakov for a detailed medical explanation. Khrushchëv, avoiding debate, announced the proposals from the Bureau of the Presidium. Malenkov was suggested as Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Beria would be one of his First Deputies and would take charge of the Ministries of Internal Affairs (MVD) and State Security (MGB). Khrushchëv would remain a Secretary of the Party Central Committee. The older veterans were not ignored. Voroshilov was to be made Chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet. Molotov, who retained his standing in the minds of fellow leaders despite Stalin’s attack on him, would become First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers (as did not only Beria but also Bulganin). The key figures, however, were Malenkov, Beria and Khrush-chëv. This was signalled in the decision to entrust them with the task of bringing Stalin’s papers ‘into necessary order’. Every proposal was unanimously approved and the meeting lasted only forty minutes.23 Stalin’s specific wishes were being repudiated. He had been plotting the downfall of Beria as well as Molotov and Mikoyan. Malenkov, however, saw Beria as a useful ally and Khrushchëv temporarily accepted the fait accompli.
Malenkov, Beria and Khrushchëv had known Stalin in the years when he held the power of life or death over them. They had no experience of politics free of fear that he might order their arrest. Beria got his son Sergo to train as a pilot and learn the international air routes in case the family needed to flee.24 Beria, Molotov, Voroshilov, Mikoyan and Kaganovich had reason to bless Stalin’s parting with this earthly life. Others such as Khrushchëv and Malenkov must have worried that Stalin’s menace might eventually be directed at them too. The entire Presidium had shivered with fear for months. Stalin’s closest subordinates had plenty of interest in his demise and in conspiring to hasten its occurrence. The reasons for death remain obscure. Although an autopsy was carried out, the report has never been found. This would be more than enough to induce suspicions. Furthermore, the ten doctors who cared for him at the end composed a history of his illness. Yet it was not completed until July (and has only recently become available).25 Its plausible conclusion was that Stalin died of natural causes. But the delay in composition was odd, as was the loss of the autopsy document: perhaps something important was being covered up.
The verdict must remain open. One possibility is that he was murdered, probably with the connivance of Beria and Khrustalëv. Poison administered in Stalin’s food is the method usually touted; another suggestion is that Beria arranged for his men to enter the dacha and kill the Leader with a lethal injection. In one strange version it is alleged that the man who died at the Blizhnyaya house was not Stalin but his double; but this too is far-fetched speculation entirely without evidence (and indeed without an explanation of why, if the corpse belonged to a double, Stalin did not return to wreak vengeance on the plotters).
The corpse was carried to the institute’s first floor on a stretcher and medical staff took over from guards who were still in a shocked condition — many were in tears. Khrustalëv alone stayed as the other guards went back downstairs to the vestibule. Stalin’s false teeth were removed and given to the guard commander for safekeeping. Like Lenin, Stalin was to be embalmed. He had complicated this task in 1952 by arresting Boris Zbarski, who had been in charge of the Mausoleum laboratory for many years.26 But the chemistry had long ago been recorded for others to use. Meanwhile Stalin’s corpse was laid out in a catafalque on Red Square.27 The same guards accompanied the body to the Hall of Columns down from Red Square, where it stayed until the day of the funeral.28 The order was given to convert the Lenin Mausoleum into a joint resting place for both Lenin and Stalin. There was nothing unexpected about this, even though Stalin had given no instructions. For two decades he had been hailed as the greatest living human being. The Presidium simply assumed that his corpse should receive the same treatment as Stalin had organised for Lenin in 1924.
Radio and newspapers announced his death on 6 March. The popular shock was immense since no prior intimation of his physical collapse had been given; and indeed there had been no comment in previous years about the general decline in his health. Crowds gathered. Muscovites raced to catch a glimpse of the dictator’s remains before the funeral. Trains and buses from distant provinces were packed with passengers avid to see Stalin lying in state. By Metro and bus everyone came to the capital’s centre and then walked up on foot to the cobbled square with sombre eagerness. On 8 March the human mass became too large for the police to control. Far too many people were converging from all directions. Panic ensued as many tried to turn back. The result was disastrous. Thousands of individuals were trampled and badly injured, and the number of people who suffered fatal asphyxiation (which was withheld from the newspapers) went into the hundreds. Even in his coffin the Leader had not lost his capacity to deal out death at random to his subjects. There was another aspect to this tragedy: it indicated the limits of state control even in the USSR. Outward obedience to orders was shown most of the time; but the surface of public calm was a brittle one and the MVD was nervous of prohibiting ordinary people from doing what they wanted in the first couple of days after the news was broadcast.