By 1953, Joseph Stalin had reigned in terror over the Soviet Union for 29 years. Ruling the so-called communist nation with an iron fist, it's estimated that his policies and purges killed upward of 15 million people, or around 1,400 per day if you're a lover of morbid math. To be fair to Stalin, nobody really knows how many people actually died, with historians guessing somewhere between 9 to 25 million. Fuck, never mind. Either way that's way too many people. Of these millions, about one million were executed on Stalin's direct orders, or if you're again curious about the grisly math, around 95 people per day. It was a frightening time to be alive in Russia, especially if you were educated. People never knew when the secret police might come knocking on their doors. If they were lucky they just got sent to a Gulag. If they were unlucky they were tortured and executed.
As Stalin grew older he only became more crazy and paranoid. On the one hand he wanted the entire country to love him. On the other he was convinced that everyone was out to murder him. Ruling under Stalin was a Central Committee of eight aging sycophants whose main duty was to drink with the aging dictator. Every evening they were forced to visit Stalin to guzzle vodka late into the night, watch American cowboy movies, and hope to god they didn't say anything that might get them killed. The eight survived decades of purges by kissing Stalin's ass and going along with whatever crazy thing entered his head. Many had ordered the deaths of their own friends and family members in order to retain their positions.
Amongst the eight were only two men of any kind of ambition. The kind of men who recognized that Stalin couldn't live forever. Chief amongst these was Laventiy Berea, head of the Soviet secret police. Berea was a dead eyed sociopath with a well known penchant for child rape. His favorite things were teenage girls, ordering executions, and personally torturing people. Each evening he would have his secret police collect a new victim, and each morning he would send the poor girl home with a bouquet of flowers. Berea was such a monster that even Stalin found him repugnant, though he kept him around because of how effective he was at his job. Berea's rival was Nikita Khrushchev, a fat little angry man who was head of the Moscow communist party. Khrushchev first rose to prominence when he helped Stalin with a series of purges in the 1930's, followed by time serving as a political officer in the military, which mostly involved executing people not found to be loyal enough. Khrushchev was the newest member of the committee, having been brought to Moscow by Stalin to act as a rival to Berea, and also to do vigorous Ukrainian dances on demand.
In March of 1953, Stalin had a stroke at his home. He laid in a puddle of his own piss all night, his guards too afraid of being executed to check on him. When Stalin was finally discovered the next morning, the Central Committee was convened to decide what to do, a process that took close to twelve hours. On the one hand, the committee members were deathly afraid of what would happen if Stalin discovered any of them giving orders. On the other, they were all likely hoping Stalin would die. Even when they finally made a decision, getting a doctor was no simple matter, given that all the best ones had recently been executed after a few got caught plotting against Stalin. Luckily, a few were still alive and being tortured, so the committee had the torturers switch their line of questioning from plots against Stalin to how best to medically treat him. Note that this in no way involved stopping the torture. Stalin died three days later and his body was put on display next to that of Vladimir Lenin.
With Stalin dead, the Central Committee tried to run the Soviet Union by consensus, with Berea and Khrushchev battling behind the scenes for power. Berea was pushing for better relations with the United States and to reform the country's economy by making it more capitalist. Remember, this man was a child diddling psychopath. Khrushchev wanted to give more power to the communist party, pushing the country closer to the socialist ideal. Remember, this man assisted in purges that killed millions. In the end it was Berea who gained the upper hand, mostly because he controlled the secret police and so knew everybody's darkest secrets. However, this only lasted six months before the other committee members, with the help of the Red Army, had him arrested, secretly tried, and executed. Khrushchev took power, and within a year and a half had all the other members of the Central Committee removed or demoted, giving him sole control over the Soviet Union. Stalin remained a powerful influence in the country until 1961, when Khrushchev publicly denounced him and had his body taken from its place of honor by Lenin and secretly buried. Three years later, Khrushchev was deposed and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev.
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