Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin in the context of "Embalming"

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (né Dzhugashvili; 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician, dictator and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. His rule oversaw mass atrocities that caused an estimated 20 million deaths, and he is widely considered one of the most brutal despots of the modern era. He held office as General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1922 to 1952 and as premier from 1941 until his death. Despite initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he eventually consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Stalin codified the party's official interpretation of Marxism as Marxism–Leninism, and his version of it is referred to as Stalinism.

Born into a poor Georgian family in Gori, Russian Empire, Stalin attended the Tiflis Theological Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction through bank robberies and other crimes, and edited the party's newspaper, Pravda. He was repeatedly arrested and underwent several exiles to Siberia. After the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution of 1917, Stalin served as a member of the Politburo, and from 1922 used his position as General Secretary to gain control over the party bureaucracy. After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin won the leadership struggle over rivals including Leon Trotsky. Stalin's doctrine of socialism in one country became central to the party's ideology, and his five-year plans starting in 1928 led to forced agricultural collectivisation, rapid industrialisation, and a centralised command economy. His policies contributed to a famine in 1932–1933 which killed millions, including in the Holodomor in Ukraine. Between 1936 and 1938, Stalin executed hundreds of thousands of his real and perceived political opponents in the Great Purge. Under his regime, an estimated 18 million people passed through the Gulag system of forced labour camps, and more than six million people, including kulaks and entire ethnic groups, were deported to remote areas of the country.

The history of the Soviet Union between 1927 and 1953, commonly referred to as the Stalin Era or the Stalinist Era, covers the period in Soviet history from the establishment of Stalinism through victory in the Second World War and down to the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. Stalin sought to destroy his enemies while transforming Soviet society with central planning, in particular through the forced collectivization of agriculture and rapid development of heavy industry. Stalin consolidated his power within the party and the state and fostered an extensive cult of personality. Soviet secret-police and the mass-mobilization of the Communist Party served as Stalin's major tools in molding Soviet society. Stalin's methods in achieving his goals, which included party purges, ethnic cleansings, political repression of the general population, and forced collectivization, led to millions of deaths: in Gulag labor camps and during famine.

World War II, known as "the Great Patriotic War" by Soviet historians, devastated much of the USSR, with about one out of every three World War II deaths representing a citizen of the Soviet Union. In the course of World War II, the Soviet Union's armies occupied Eastern Europe, where they established or supported Communist puppet governments. By 1949, the Cold War had started between the Western Bloc and the Eastern (Soviet) Bloc, with the Warsaw Pact (created 1955) pitched against NATO (created 1949) in Europe. After 1945, Stalin did not directly engage in any wars, continuing his totalitarian rule until his death in 1953.

De-Stalinization (Russian: десталинизация, romanized: destalinizatsiya) comprised a series of political reforms in the Soviet Union after the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, and the thaw brought about by ascension of Nikita Khrushchev to power, and his 1956 secret speech "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences", which denounced Stalin's cult of personality and the Stalinist political system.

Monuments to Stalin were removed, his name was removed from places, buildings, and the state anthem, and his body was removed from the Lenin Mausoleum (known as the Lenin and Stalin Mausoleum from 1953 to 1961) and buried. These reforms were started by the collective leadership which succeeded him after his death on 5 March 1953, comprising Georgi Malenkov, Premier of the Soviet Union; Lavrentiy Beria, head of the Ministry of the Interior; and Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (né Dzhugashvili; 18 December [O.S. 6 December] 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held office as General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1922 to 1952 and as premier from 1941 until his death. Despite initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he eventually consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Stalin codified the party's official interpretation of Marxism as Marxism–Leninism, and his version of it is referred to as Stalinism.

Born into a poor Georgian family in Gori, Russian Empire, Stalin attended the Tiflis Theological Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction through bank robberies and other crimes, and edited the party's newspaper, Pravda. He was repeatedly arrested and underwent several exiles to Siberia. After the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution of 1917, Stalin served as a member of the Politburo, and from 1922 used his position as General Secretary to gain control over the party bureaucracy. After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin won the leadership struggle over rivals including Leon Trotsky. Stalin's doctrine of socialism in one country became central to the party's ideology, and his five-year plans starting in 1928 led to forced agricultural collectivisation, rapid industrialisation, and a centralised command economy. His policies contributed to a famine in 1932–1933 which killed millions, including in the Holodomor in Ukraine. Between 1936 and 1938, Stalin executed hundreds of thousands of his real and perceived political opponents in the Great Purge. Under his regime, an estimated 18 million people passed through the Gulag system of forced labour camps, and more than six million people, including kulaks and entire ethnic groups, were deported to remote areas of the country.

The Khrushchev thaw (Russian: хрущёвская о́ттепель, romanized: khrushchovskaya ottepel, IPA: [xrʊˈɕːɵfskəjə ˈotʲːɪpʲɪlʲ] or simply ottepel) is the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were relaxed due to Nikita Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinization and peaceful coexistence with other nations. The term was coined after Ilya Ehrenburg's 1954 novel The Thaw ("Оттепель"), sensational for its time.

The thaw became possible after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. First Secretary Khrushchev denounced former General Secretary Stalin in the "Secret Speech" at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party, then ousted the Stalinists during his power struggle in the Kremlin. The thaw was highlighted by Khrushchev's 1954 visit to Beijing, China, his 1955 visit to Belgrade, Yugoslavia (with whom relations had soured since the Tito–Stalin split in 1948), and his subsequent meeting with US president Dwight D. Eisenhower later that year, culminating in Khrushchev's 1959 visit to the United States.

Robert John Service FBA (born 29 October 1947) is a British post-revisionist historian, academic, and author who has written extensively on the history of the Soviet Union, particularly the period from the October Revolution in 1917 to the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. He was until 2013 a professor of Russian history at the University of Oxford, a fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford, and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He has written biographies of Vladimir Lenin, Stalin, and Leon Trotsky. Service has been a fellow of the British Academy since 1998.