On March 1, 1953, after an all-night dinner with interior minister Lavrenty Beria and future premiers Georgi Malenkov, Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev, Josif Stalin, truly Evil Bastard, did not emerge from his room the next day, having probably suffered a stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body.
Although his guards thought it odd that he did not rise at his usual time, the next day they were under orders not to disturb him and he was not discovered until that evening. He died four days later, on March 5, 1953, at the age of 74, and was buried on March 9. His daughter Svetlana recalls the scene as she stood by his death bed “He suddenly opened his eyes and cast a glance over everyone in the room. It was a terrible glance. Then something incomprehensible and awesome happened. He suddenly lifted his left hand as though he were pointing to something above and bringing down a curse upon all of us. The next moment after a final effort the spirit wrenched its self free of the flesh.”
Officially, the cause of death was listed as a cerebral hemorrhage. Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that Beria had, immediately after the stroke, gone about “spewing hatred against [Stalin] and mocking him“, and then, when Stalin showed signs of consciousness, dropped to his knees and kissed his hand. When Stalin fell unconscious again, Beria immediately stood and spat.
His body was preserved in Lenin’s Mausoleum until October 31, 1961, when his body was removed from the Mausoleum and buried next to the Kremlin walls as part of the process of de-Stalinization.
Wait, it starts to get weird here, America learns of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s death when Air Force Staff Sergeant Johnny Cash intercepts a coded message from Russia. Cash enlisted in 1950 after he turned 18 and was assigned to the 12th Radio Squadron Mobile of the US Air Force Security Service at Landsberg, West Germany, where he proved his skill as a Morse Code operator.
The famed Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev lived in dread fear of getting on the wrong side of Stalin. Always looking to appease the Evil Bastard, he died at the age of 61 from a cerebral hemorrhage on March 5, 1953 (the same day and even hour and cause that Communist Party leader Joseph Stalin died.)
Prokofiev had lived near the Red Square and for three days the throngs gathered to mourn Stalin made it impossible to carry Prokofiev’s body out for the funeral service at the headquarters of the Soviet Composer’s Union. Paper flowers and a taped recording of the funeral march from his Romeo and Juliet had to be used, as all real flowers and musicians were reserved for Stalin’s funeral.
Herman J. Mankiewicz, producer and alcoholic screenwriter, best known for his collaboration with Orson Welles on the screenplay of Citizen Kane, for which they both won an Academy Award and famously clashed over credit,
died of uremia poisoning in Hollywood, CA on March 5, 1953, the same day as Joseph Stalin and Sergei Prokofiev.
And so it goes.
The Haus of Dcaligari 