Stampede at Stalin's funeral, how many people died? Stalin's funeral (Memories of eyewitnesses, in my opinion, selective and one-sided) (17 photos) Death and funeral of Stalin to numerous testimonies

Joseph Stalin, who condemned hundreds of thousands of people to death during his lifetime, could hardly have known that even his funeral would become “bloody”.

The reaction of many Soviet people on the death of the "father of nations" was expressed in sincere regret. The cult of personality represented the leader as the protector of the people and the main guide on the way to a brighter future, so many Muscovites and guests of the capital came to say goodbye to Stalin on March 6. Directly in the Hall of Columns, the flow of many thousands of people entering and leaving was organized. The main events on March 9 on Red Square to bring Stalin into the mausoleum also went off without incident. However, the confluence of the people, led by sorrow and curiosity, was so great that the tragedy could not be avoided.

In the area of Trubnaya Square, at a distance of one and a half kilometers from Red Square, the crowd turned out to be so dense that people were disoriented - no one explained to them which route to take so as not to run into the fence. In addition, the unevenness of the relief played a fatal role. The descent of Rozhdestvensky Boulevard was very steep, so during the passage along it, the townspeople began to lose their balance. Trubnaya Square was protected by military trucks from the continuation of the Neglinka River taken into the pipe, which gave the name to this place. The narrowing of the crowd in the likeness of a "bottleneck" led to mass casualties. Some of the people fell into the recesses near the basement windows and were trampled on. In addition, according to available evidence, one of the trucks was eventually demolished and people abruptly rolled across the square into the resulting hole, with many falling. It is worth noting that the military, who were on the trucks, rescued women and children by picking them up from the crowd with tied waist belts.

The exact number of victims of the "state funeral" was classified, but eyewitnesses speak of several hundred and even thousands of people crushed alive. Many died from lack of any medical care- It was not possible to deliver the wounded to hospitals through blocked streets. There is a version that the bodies were taken out and buried in common graves in the suburbs of Moscow. However, there are also certificates issued to relatives about the death of people on March 6 (in one of them, the cause is chest compression).

Irina Vysochina in 1953 studied at the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University. Half of her group are the children of the repressed, including Irina herself. Her father was imprisoned in 1942 on a denunciation, in 1953 he was already free, but he had no right to live in Moscow with his wife and daughter. Therefore, the death of Stalin became more of a holiday for Vysochina. She rejoiced discreetly, to herself. “I also wanted to go then to make sure that he really died. That it's not fake. That something will really change,” she recalls.

Stalin's body was put up for farewell in the Hall of Columns. The main streams rushed there from the Kursk railway station, Chistye Prudy, Tsvetnoy Boulevard and Tverskoy. Those who wanted to get from Volkhonka and Vozdvizhenka were sent to Trubnaya Square: they said that they had to take a queue there, which should wind around Moscow to the Hall of Columns.

Many took the subway. They came here, to the station "Chistye Prudy" (then it was called "Kirovskaya") and went further, towards Sretensky Boulevard.

TV presenter Alexander Belyaev was four years old at that time. He recalls: in kindergarten Dad took him on the subway that day. And the street was unusually quiet for the center of Moscow.

In the afternoon, a mass of people gathered near Trubnaya Square, who came from Rozhdestvensky and Sretensky Boulevards. On Sretensky there was a convoy of trucks, and they stood very tightly, literally back to back. It is impossible to get out onto the roadway, and on the other hand there is a wall of the house, so there is nowhere to go. But no one at that moment had yet imagined that this could become a trap. People moved on.

Among the string of people that went to Trubnaya was a fifth-year student of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University, Yuri Borko. He and his friends ended up behind a cordon, separated from the crowd by military trucks. The crowd by that time had already become quite dense, in several rows, because of this it moved slowly, almost stood still. The young people decided not to go into the crowd - it still did not move - and went home.

A stampede began on Rozhdestvensky Boulevard: it was clear that there, ahead, in the lowland, a crowd was swaying. More people approached from the side of Sretensky Boulevard, so it was already impossible to go back. This current literally picked up people and carried them down.

At five o'clock in the evening, Borko was summoned to the district committee of the Komsomol and ordered to return to Trubnaya: it was necessary to help the police to contain the flow of people who were rushing from the side of Tsvetnoy Boulevard. The Komsomol members kept a human chain, not looking around, and a few tens of meters away - on the other side of Trubnaya Square - people were dying. “At first they didn’t tell us anything about what was happening on the square. And then one of the policemen said that there was a stampede, there were already victims,” says Borko.

Rozhdestvensky Boulevard turns into Trubnaya Square. There was little chance for people in the crowd to survive, and it was impossible to find salvation in the alley, because it was blocked. It would seem - it was possible to remove the trucks and let everyone out. But there was no order from above, and the entrance to Trubnaya Square was blocked. People died under the feet of other people: they were crushed on lampposts, cast-iron gratings and sides of cars.

“These sides were covered in blood,” the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who survived the stampede, later recalled. “I was pressed by the movement towards this girl, and suddenly I did not hear, but with my body I felt how her fragile bones were cracking, breaking against the traffic light. Suddenly I felt that I was walking on soft ground. It was a human body. I tucked my legs, and so the crowd carried me ... "

Little Sasha Belyaev was imprisoned in a garden somewhere in the back of Rozhdestvensky Boulevard. It was impossible to break through to the children: they were stuck there for several days. Children and parents were forced to spend the night in the kindergarten, where it was impossible to even bring food.

On the morning of the next day, Yuri Borko found out that the brother of a classmate had not returned home. They later found his body in the morgue. “The pathologist said he was pushed into the bars. There was a huge window on the ground floor, which was covered with this iron grate. There he was found. He was pressed so hard that his entire chest was destroyed. The command was given to write a false version of death. There, one from the heart, the other from that, the third from the third.

On the radio and in the newspapers, there is nothing about it, only calls to unite in the face of the loss of the beloved father of nations. Chroniclers in the Hall of Columns are filming "The Great Farewell" - this is how the film about the first days of Russia without Stalin will be called.

Neither day nor night did the measured, like a reel sea waves, traffic on the streets adjacent to the House of the Unions, and in the camps convicted under Article 58 could hardly contain their jubilation. But the country also learned about this many years later, and not from official reports.

“And - they bared their teeth, they just didn’t openly rejoice, rough, sharp-cheeked, rude dark prisoner faces. And seeing this beginning movement of smiles, the major commanded beside himself:

- Hats! take off!!

And for hundreds, everything on the edge, on the blade, hesitated: it’s still impossible not to take it off, and it’s very insulting to take it off.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward

Amnesty for political prisoners is not yet soon: in the summer of 1953, a wave of uprisings will begin in the camps of Norilsk, Vorkuta, and a year later - in Kengir. The authorities, of course, coped with the riots, they even used tanks. But how it turned out that they could not or did not want to elementarily separate the flows of unarmed people in Moscow - and today it is not a mystery, not a state secret.

Stalin's death is only the beginning of a long chain of events. In 1956, Khrushchev will deliver his famous speech at the 20th Party Congress, and rehabilitation will begin. In 1961, Stalin will be taken out of the Mausoleum, at the same time the famous poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko "Stalin's Heirs" will be released, in which the poet who survived on Trubnaya says almost in plain text: "Farewell to Stalin will last for a very long time."

“He wanted to remember all those who endured him -

Ryazan and Kursk young recruits,

To somehow after gain strength for a sortie,

And get up from the ground, and get to them, unreasonable ones.

He thought of something. He just took a nap.

And I appeal to our government with a request:

Double, triple guard at this plate,

So that Stalin does not get up, and with Stalin - the past "

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Stalin's Heirs

Despite the tragedy, farewell to Stalin in the Hall of Columns continued for two more days. Data on how many people died on the streets of Moscow is still classified.

A year ago, the first unofficial filming of the funeral itself appeared. American military Martin Manhoff, who worked at the US Embassy, filmed the ceremony from the balcony of the diplomatic mission. You can see how the guests disperse from Red Square after the ceremony: they were not trampled on and pressured on Trubnaya, they have special passes, special services and special vehicles that are served to take them to their offices. Documentary evidence: Soviet society has already firmly taken shape as a caste, and this - together with the Gulag and dispossession - is also one of the main Stalinist achievements.

Harry Knyagnitsky, Pavel Rakitin, Igor Meluzov - RTVI

How many people came to say goodbye to Stalin on March 9, 1953, is not exactly known. Tens or even hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens flocked to the Hall of Columns, where his body was put up for parting. Their faces showed real grief. Many have come and gone in tears.

Documentary footage of the funeral of Joseph Vissarionovich was shown on television. The event was widely covered. The only thing that was hushed up at that time was the terrible crush around the House of the Union, due to which from several hundred to 2-3 thousand people died (different sources mention different numbers).

How it was

The fact that Stalin's funeral caused many deaths, the authorities preferred to hush up. The exact number of deaths in the crowd saying goodbye is classified. Witnesses of the events told terrible things. The literary critic Elena Pasternak later recalled that a real pandemonium was happening on Trubnaya Street in Moscow.

Muscovites living in neighboring houses were blocked in their apartments, because a dense, endless column of people was moving along the roadway. The pressure was terrible. The inhabitants of the lower floors heard not only the screams of the crushed, but also some kind of gnashing, crunching of the bones, from which the hair stood on end. When the crowd began to thin out, heaps of clothes, someone's galoshes and, worst of all, pieces of people began to be taken out of the thick in wheelbarrows. The janitors worked all night long. [S-BLOCK]

Another Muscovite, political scientist Yuri Bartko personally participated in the cordon of Trubnaya. Subsequently, he told what happened there and how security was provided these days. On March 6, his relative Anatoly died in a stampede. A strong 30-year-old man was pressed so hard with his chest against the iron bars that the bones could not stand it. The chest was literally crushed.

Relatives learned of his death on March 7. When they came to the morgue for the body, several dozen people were already waiting under the doors of this institution. In order not to advertise the number of deaths, the authorities ordered the morgues to issue false certificates, which indicated the fake causes of death.

Security measures

The authorities were not ready for such a tragic turn of events. Security measures were provided. And yet the crowd of those wishing to say goodbye to the leader turned out to be many times larger than one could have imagined. The situation got out of hand. Since the morning of March 6, military formations have settled in Moscow. Parts of the soldiers were thrown there, but this was done secretly. As Muscovites living in these areas were explained, "the military were solving their tasks."

By the end of the day, in the area of Trubnaya Square and some other streets, they began to create a ring, which was supposed to stop the flow of those saying goodbye and stop the murderous crush. The soldiers stood in tight ranks. The main pressure was experienced by the first rows, so the military personnel in them were constantly changed.

Funeral

Farewell to Stalin lasted from 16:00 on March 6 until his funeral on March 9. All these days the deceased lay in his coffin in his favorite greyish-green uniform. Chandeliers were lit above him, covered with mourning crepe. Citizens passed by the coffin in a continuous river, shedding tears. On the morning of March 9, about 2 tens of thousands of people were lined up in a funeral procession on Red Square. All Moscow was buried in flowers.

In such circumstances, Stalin's coffin was brought into the Mausoleum. After the mourning meeting at 12:00, artillery salute thundered over the Kremlin. Then 5 minutes of silence were announced. Military detachments passed in front of the Mausoleum, and Soviet planes flew in rows in the sky. So the country said goodbye to its leader. Only on the first day of this farewell, about 400 people were crushed.

More about Stalin's death

Farewell to the leader
The funeral of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, who died on March 5, 1953, took place four days later, on March 9

March 5, 1953 died Joseph Stalin. Thousands of people came to say goodbye to the leader, whose body was first in the House of Unions, and then in the Mausoleum. What the newspapers wrote about and how witnesses of the events remember the days of farewell - in the Kommersant photo gallery. On this topic:

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Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet people, died on the evening of March 5, 1953. The coffin with his remains was in the House of the Unions for three days, and on March 9 it was transferred to the Mausoleum. Between these two dates, hundreds of thousands of people passed by Stalin's body. Stalin ruled for so long that the country rather felt orphaned rather than liberated. The poet Tvardovsky called these days "the hour of the greatest sadness." Sorrow and excitement at Stalin's funeral led to hundreds [exact data classified] killed in a stampede on the way to the Hall of Columns. Pravda newspaper March 6, 1953: “Dear comrades and friends! Central Committee Communist Party Soviet Union, the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, with a feeling of great sorrow, inform the Party and all the working people of the Soviet Union that on March 5 at 9 o'clock. 50 minutes in the evening, the heart of the comrade-in-arms and ingenious successor of Lenin's work, the wise leader and teacher of the Communist Party and the Soviet people, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, stopped beating. The immortal name of Stalin will always live in the hearts of the Soviet people and all progressive mankind.”

Decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR of March 6, 1953: “In order to perpetuate the memory of the great leaders Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, as well as prominent figures of the Communist Party and the Soviet state, buried on Red Square near the Kremlin wall, build in Moscow a monumental building - the Pantheon - a monument to the eternal glory of the great people of the Soviet country. Upon completion of the construction of the Pantheon, transfer to it the sarcophagus with the body of V.I. Lenin and the sarcophagus with the body of I.V. Stalin, as well as the remains of prominent figures of the Communist Party and the Soviet state buried near the Kremlin wall, and open access to the Pantheon for the broad masses of workers. The Pantheon was planned to be built either on the site of the historical GUM, or on a wide highway from Moscow University to the Palace of Soviets, but they never realized their plan. Stalin's remains were buried near the Kremlin wall.

3. Photo: Oleg Knorring

Stalin's death was marked by hundreds, if not thousands of deaths in the stampede on the way to the Hall of Columns. The poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko recalled how the young man found himself in this terrible crowd: “In some places on Trubnaya Square, you had to raise your legs high - they walked over the meat.”

Yuri Borko, born in 1929, student of the history department of Moscow State University: “I will refrain from talking about how the death of Stalin was perceived different people, all this surfaced later. And on March 6, the main and lasting impression from what he saw was the insanity of thousands and thousands of Muscovites who rushed into the streets to join the queue and see dead man, who, with more reason than Louis XIV himself, could say about himself: "The state is me." "I" turned to dust, and this was perceived by millions of Soviet citizens almost as the collapse of the universe. I was shocked too. All my critical reflections, which have accumulated over the course of several years, seem to have been erased.

Newspaper " TVNZ March 7, 1953: “A grave misfortune befell our country, our people. Cities and villages of their beloved Motherland were dressed in mourning. As soon as a message was transmitted over the radio that the coffin with the body of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was installed in the Hall of Columns, an unstoppable stream of people rushed to the center from all parts of the capital, from its outskirts, from its outposts. People walked alone in groups, walked in families, holding hands, or with large garlands of flowers and very small, modest wreaths. They walked in silence, eyebrows knitted sternly, looking at half-mast black-bordered flags hung on the pediments of the buildings. Thousands of people were moving towards the House of the Unions, but such silence reigned, as if there was not even this huge stream of people, merged in immeasurable and deepest sorrow. Everyone in those moments understood: together - it's easier.

Speech of Patriarch Alexy I on the day of the funeral: “We, having gathered to pray for him, cannot remain silent about his always benevolent, sympathetic attitude towards our church needs. His memory is unforgettable for us, and our Russian Orthodox Church, mourning his departure from us, escorts him on his last journey, "to the path of all the earth", with fervent prayer. We prayed for him when the news came of his serious illness. And now we pray for the peace of his immortal soul. We believe that our prayer for the deceased will be heard by the Lord. And to our beloved and unforgettable Joseph Vissarionovich, we prayerfully, with deep, ardent love, proclaim eternal memory.

Maya Nusinova, born in 1927, a school teacher: “Many told me later, and there are so many memories now, how happy they were when they learned about Stalin’s death, as they repeated: die, die. I don't know, I only remember horror. There was a case of doctors, they said that the process would end with a public execution, and the rest of the Jews would be loaded into wagons, like kulaks once, and taken out, that the barracks were already ready somewhere in Siberia. There was a teacher in my school, her husband worked somewhere in the Central Committee, so after Timashuk's article she shouted in the teacher's room: think, after all, the children of these nonhumans studied together with ours! Yes, I thought that without Stalin this hatred would spill out, that only he could control it, and now they would start killing us. It was naive, of course, but it seemed to me then.

Sergey Agadzhanyan, born in 1929, student of Stankin: “We approached the coffin. I had a wild thought: I have never seen Stalin, but now I will see him. A few steps away. At that moment there were no members of the Politburo, only simple people. But even in the Hall of Columns, I did not notice the crying people. People were frightened - by death, by the crowd - maybe they didn’t cry from fright? Fear mixed with curiosity, lostness, but not melancholy, not mourning.

Oleg Basilashvili, born in 1934, student of the Moscow Art Theater Studio: “I lived on Pokrovka and went to study on foot - along Pokrovka, along Maroseyka, then along Teatralny Proyezd, then along Pushkinskaya Street (B. Dmitrovka. - ed.), up along Kamergersky - and came to the Moscow Art Theater Studio. In order to get into the studio, in those days I had to cross two queues that went to Stalin for days. Some major was standing there, and I showed him my student ID, said that they should let me through, that I should go to the studio. But as a result, I joined the queue and very soon found myself in the Hall of Columns of the House of the Unions. There was no guard of honor at the coffin, in any case, I did not pay attention. I was struck that there was no special mourning atmosphere in the hall. It was very light, very dusty, and along the walls stood a huge number of wreaths. Stalin lay in a uniform with shiny buttons. His face, which was always so kind in the photographs, seemed deadly angry to me.”

10.

Newspaper The New York Times: “Moscow is stirring. Buses scurried back and forth. Mustard-colored convoy trucks were increasingly seen on the streets. I was puzzled. It seemed to me that a revolution was being prepared.”

11.

Elena Orlovskaya, born in 1940, a schoolgirl: “During the break, everyone also walked quietly, and at the beginning of the second lesson the teacher came in, pointed her finger at one girl and at me: and you go with me. We arrived at the auditorium. To the right are two windows, between them there is an opening, in the opening the Generalissimo always hung, five meters high, at the parade, in full growth, in a tunic. There is such a little red step and the flowers are always alive. The teacher says: stand in the guard of honor. They walk around, run around, no one has lessons, then gradually everyone left, silence came, and we stand on a string with our hands at our sides. We stand for an hour - the clock hangs opposite, we stand for two ... I am overwhelmed by thoughts: what will I say at home? How do I confess to my dad that I was on the guard of honor? It was torment."

12.

Lyudmila Dashevskaya, born in 1930, senior laboratory engineer at the Krasnaya Zvezda plant: “And that's how I was all wrinkled and all beaten, and I went out - just in time for Stoleshnikov Lane. And there was cleanliness, emptiness and there were urns. And I was so exhausted that I sat down on one of these bins and rested. And I walked first along Stoleshnikov, then along Petrovka, then I went out along Likhov Lane to Sadovoye. Silence, the light burned everywhere, as if in a room, everything was illuminated. And what struck me: all the posters (they used to be pasted on wooden shields) - all the posters were sealed with white paper. Therefore, from time to time, these white spots were highlighted on an empty street. And there were no people."

13.

The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper on March 8, 1953: “For more than a quarter of a century the name of the great Stalin has been borne by the Moscow depot of the Oktyabrskaya railway. 26 years ago, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin gave a speech at a meeting of workers here. The funeral rally begins. The workers are listening with deep emotion to the appeal of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to all members of the Party, to all the working people of the Soviet Union. The floor is given to the driver, Hero of Socialist Labor V. I. Vyshegradtsev. He says:

The one who was our father, teacher and friend, who, together with the great Lenin, created our mighty party, our socialist state, who showed us the path to communism, has left us. Died great Stalin the creator of our happiness!”

14.

Andrey Zaliznyak, born in 1935, student of the philological faculty of Moscow State University: “It became known that some distant acquaintances died, mostly boys and girls. People died in many places, on Trubnaya it was the worst and on Dmitrovka too - there quite a lot of people were simply crushed against the walls. Some ledge of the wall was enough ... corpses lay almost all over. My then friend turned out to be unusually dexterous, he was a man of a heroic disposition, and he considered it his duty to go there by all means. He said that he managed to pass by Stalin's coffin three times - maybe he exaggerated his exploits a little. Then it became clear that it was a fatal number.

15.

16.

Formally, Stalin was buried twice. The second time on the night of October 31 to November 1, 1961 at the Kremlin wall, shielding the burial place with plywood shields. Red Square was cordoned off by the military throughout the night. Stalin had already been exposed by the congress, and there were no people left in the country who did not understand what was happening.

17.

The former director of the laboratory of the Mausoleum, Professor Sergei Debov, about the autopsy of Stalin in a special gentle way, so that it would be easier to save the embalmed body later: “On the night of March 5-6, 1953, first of all, they made a cast of hands and face. Then proceeded to the autopsy and temporary embalming. There was a surprise. We never saw Stalin during our lifetime. In portraits, he was always handsome, youthful. But it turned out that the face with strong pockmarks and senile age spots. They are especially evident after death. It is impossible to put up such a face for parting in the Hall of Columns. We've done a great job removing stains. But then anyway, after installing the coffin, I had to mask everything with light. And the rest was all as usual. We are always afraid of body contact with metal, especially copper. Therefore, everything for Stalin was made of gold - buttons, shoulder straps. The order block was made of platinum.

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Parting

Leaders of the Party and Government at the coffin of I. V. Stalin. Column Hall of the House of the Unions March 6, 1953. The face of L.P. Beria is blacked out in the photo.

For farewell, Stalin's body was exhibited on March 6 in the Hall of Columns of the House of the Unions. From 4 pm the first streams of people came who wanted to say goodbye to Stalin.

Stalin lay in a coffin, on a high pedestal, framed by red banners, roses and green branches. He was wearing his favorite everyday grayish-green uniform with a turn-down collar, on which the general's overcoat buttonholes were sewn. It differed from the lifetime form only in the sewn shoulder straps of the Generalissimo and gold buttons. In addition to the order bars, the medals "Golden Star" and "Hammer and Sickle" were attached to the tunic (although Stalin wore only the latter during his lifetime).

Crystal chandeliers with electric candles were covered with black crepe. On the white marble columns are fixed sixteen scarlet velvet panels, bordered with black silk, with the emblems of the Union republics. Above the head of Stalin was bowed the giant banner of the USSR. In front of the coffin, on an atlas, lay the Marshal's Star, orders and medals of Stalin. Funeral melodies by Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Mozart were played.

Residents of Moscow and other cities, representatives of various enterprises, institutions, armed forces. Near the coffin of I. V. Stalin in the guard of honor were the leaders of the CPSU and the government: G. M. Malenkov, L. P. Beria, V. M. Molotov, K. E. Voroshilov, N. S. Khrushchev, N. A. Bulganin, L. M. Kaganovich , A. I. Mikoyan .

On the streets of Moscow, floodlights installed on trucks were turned on, they illuminated the squares and streets along which thousands of people were moving towards the House of Unions.

At night, the streets of Moscow were full of those who were waiting for their turn to say goodbye. The doors of the House of Unions were opened early in the morning, it was still dark, and farewell in the Hall of Columns resumed. In addition to Soviet citizens, representatives of many other countries took part in the ceremony.

The Chinese delegation brought wreaths from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Mao Tse-tung. In the guard of honor were Zhou En-lai, Clement Gotwald, Boleslav Berut, Matyash Rakoshi, Vylko Chervenkov, George Georgiu-Dej, Palmiro Togliatti, Walter Ulbricht, Otto Grotewohl, Dolores Ibarruri, Garry Pollit, Johann Koplenig, Ville Pessi, Pietro Nenni, Yumzhagiin Tsedenbal. The Prime Minister of Finland Urho K. Kekkonen, Chairman of the All India Peace Council Saifuddin Kitchlu also stood at the coffin.

The farewell lasted for three days and three nights. Around midnight on March 8, the farewell ceased, and preparations for the funeral began. At 2 am, numerous wreaths began to be brought out. Since it was decided to carry only 100 wreaths from the country's leadership, the largest party organizations, foreign communist parties and relatives behind the coffin, the rest of the wreaths, the number of which was in the thousands, were installed by morning on both sides of the Mausoleum.

March 9 - funeral day

Marshals and generals carried Stalin's awards on satin pillows: the Marshal's Star (Marshal S. M. Budyonny), two Orders of Victory (Marshals V. D. Sokolovsky and L. A. Govorov), three Orders of Lenin (Marshals I. S. Konev, S. K . Timoshenko, R. Ya. Malinovsky), three orders of the Red Banner (Marshals K. A. Meretskov, S.I. Bogdanov and Colonel-General Kuznetsov), Order Suvorov, I degree (Army General Zakharov). The medals were carried by Vice-Admiral V. A. Fokin, Air Marshal K. A. Vershinin, General of the Army I. Kh. Bagramyan, Colonel Generals M. I. Nedelin and K. S. Moskalenko.

Behind the coffin were members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, then the family, members and candidate members of the Central Committee, deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, heads of delegations of fraternal communist parties and an honorary military escort.

At 10:45 a.m., the coffin was removed from the carriage and placed on a red pedestal in front of the Mausoleum. Preparations for the rally began (the rise of participants to the podium of the Mausoleum). The working people of Moscow, delegations of the Union and Autonomous Republics, territories and regions gathered on the square, representatives of China, people's democracies, delegations and representatives of other states were also present.

Chairman of the Commission for organizing the funeral of Stalin N. S. Khrushchev, who opened the rally, gave the floor to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU G. M. Malenkov. The following speech was made by the First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR L.P. Beria. Then VM Molotov, First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, delivered a speech.

At 11:54 Khrushchev declared the funeral meeting closed. Departing from the podium of the Mausoleum were Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Boleslav Bierut, Pah Dem Li, Walter Ulbricht, Dolores Ibarruri, Otto Grotewohl, Vylko Chervenkov, Matyash Rakosi, Pietro Nenni, Palmiro Togliatti , Jacques Duclos, Clement Gottwald, N. A. Bulganin, V. M. Molotov, K. E. Voroshilov, G. M. Malenkov, N. S. Khrushchev, L. P. Beria, M. 3. Saburov, Zhou En-lai, M. G. Pervukhin, L. M. Kaganovich, N. M. Shvernik, A. I. Mikoyan.

G. M. Malenkov, L. P. Beria, V. M. Molotov, K. E. Voroshilov, N. S. Khrushchev, N. A. Bulganin, L. M. Kaganovich, A. I. Mikoyan raised the coffin and slowly brought it into the Mausoleum.

At 12 o'clock, an artillery salute was fired over the Kremlin. The sounds of the mourning march were followed by the beeps of Moscow industrial enterprises, and five minutes of silence began throughout the country. The funeral march was replaced by the solemn anthem of the Soviet Union. Above the Kremlin raised deflated after the death of Stalin State flag Soviet Union. At 12 hours 10 minutes, troops passed in front of the Mausoleum, aircraft flew in formation in the sky.

The speeches made at the rally were published and later included in the movie The Great Farewell. The embalmed body of Stalin was placed on public display in the Lenin Mausoleum, which in 1953-1961 was called the "Mausoleum of V. I. Lenin and I. V. Stalin." A special resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Central Committee of the CPSU of March 6 provided for the construction of the Pantheon, where it was planned to transfer the bodies of Lenin and Stalin, as well as burials near the Kremlin wall, but these projects were actually curtailed very soon.

Crush during Stalin's funeral

During the funeral, there was a stampede in the area of Trubnaya Square. In the stampede, from several hundred to two to three thousand people died (official data on the number of victims are classified).

Dorman O. Interlinear

Reburial of Stalin's body

On the last day of the congress, I. V. Spiridonov, the first secretary of the Leningrad Regional Party Committee, took the podium and, after a brief speech, made a proposal to remove Stalin's body from the Mausoleum. The proposal was accepted unanimously.

Fyodor Timofeevich Konev, the former commander of the Kremlin regiment, recalled that day: “To find out the mood of the people, I changed into civilian clothes and went out to Red Square. The people in the groups had excited conversations. Their content can be reduced to the following: "Why was this issue decided without consulting the people?"

N. S. Zakharov and the commandant of the Kremlin, Lieutenant-General A. Ya. Vedenin, learned about the impending decision in advance. They were called by N. S. Khrushchev and said:

Please keep in mind that today, probably, a decision will be made on the reburial of Stalin. The place is marked. The commandant of the Mausoleum knows where to dig a grave, - added Nikita Sergeevich. - By the decision of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, a commission of five people was created, headed by Shvernik: Mzhavanadze - First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia, Javakhishvili - Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Georgia, Shelepin - Chairman of the KGB, Demichev - First Secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee and Dygay - Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Moscow City Council.

N. M. Shvernik told the performers how to secretly organize a reburial: since a parade was to be held on Red Square on November 7, it should have been cordoned off under the pretext of a parade rehearsal. General control over the progress of work was entrusted to Zakharov's deputy, General V. Ya. Chekalov. Commander of a Separate Regiment special purpose commandant's office of the Moscow Kremlin, Konev was ordered to make a coffin from dry wood in a carpentry workshop, which was made on the same day. The wood was covered with black and red crepe. From the commandant's office of the Kremlin, six soldiers were allocated to dig the grave and eight officers to first take the sarcophagus out of the Mausoleum to the laboratory, and then lower the coffin with the body into the grave. General A. Ya. Vedenin was instructed by Zakharov to select people who were reliable, proven and had previously proven themselves well.

The disguise was provided by the head of the economic department of the commandant's office of the Kremlin, Colonel Tarasov. He had to close the right and left sides behind the Mausoleum with plywood so that the place of work was not visible from anywhere. At the same time, in the workshop of the arsenal, the artist Savinov made a wide white ribbon with the letters "LENIN". She had to close the inscription "LENIN STALIN" on the Mausoleum until the marble letters were laid out. At 18:00, the passages to Red Square were blocked, after which the servicemen began to dig a hole for burial.

All members of the commission, except for Mzhavanadze, arrived at the Mausoleum at 21:00. Eight officers took the sarcophagus and carried it down to the basement where the laboratory is located. In addition to the members of the commission, there were also scientists who had previously observed the state of Stalin's embalmed body. The glass was removed from the sarcophagus, and the officers transferred Stalin's body to the coffin.

N. M. Shvernik ordered the Gold Star of the Hero of Socialist Labor to be removed from his uniform (there was no other award, the Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union, in the sarcophagus). The chairman of the commission ordered that the golden buttons of the uniform be replaced with brass ones. All this was carried out by the commandant of the Mausoleum, Colonel K. A. Moshkov. He handed over the removed award and buttons to a special Security Room, where the awards of all those buried near the Kremlin wall were located.

When the coffin with the body of Stalin was covered with a lid, Shvernik and Javakhishvili sobbed. The officers lowered the coffin into the plywood-lined grave. Someone threw a handful of earth, as it should be according to Christian custom. The grave was buried. A slab of white marble was placed on top with the inscription: "STALIN IOSIF VISSARIONOVICH 1879−1953". Then she served as a tombstone for a long time, until a bust was erected in 1970.

Lenin's sarcophagus was installed in a central place, where he stood before Stalin's funeral in 1953.

In 1970, a monument was opened on the grave (a bust by N.V. Tomsky).

On October 21, 1962, a year after Stalin's reburial, the Pravda newspaper published Yevgeny Yevtushenko's poem "Stalin's Heirs".