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Russia's early morning newspapers were hours late. Muscovites on the way to work suspected something. They gathered in curious knots and queues at news kiosks. Shortly after 8 o'clock the papers arrived, full of meticulous details. The Russians, like the rest of the world, were being told more intimate facts about Stalin in his death throes than they had learned in all his 29 years of reign.
Leeches at the Veins. Inside the Kremlin, working on their 73-year-old patient with all the artifices of medicine, the doctors tried penicillin, oxygen mask, glucose injections for nourishment, caffeine for stimulation. They even reached desperately backward for a remedy: leeches to suck at the old man's veins.
During the past 24 hours, Stalin's condition has remained grave. The cerebral hemorrhage . . . has also impaired the stem section of the brain, respiration and blood circulation . . . The patient is in a state of sopor—profound unconsciousness.
Clear March Moscow skies gave way to gloomy clouds and snow flurries. Across Stalin's empire, villagers and peasants and workers clotted around loudspeakers and bulletin boards. In Moscow, a large crowd gathered before the Kremlin's huge Spassky gates. They shuffled sadly in the snow, huddled in shawls and greatcoats, talking in whispers. Many had tears in their eyes, some sobbed.
Fourteen hours later came the third bulletin: During Wednesday night and the first half of today, Joseph Stalin's condition became worse. At 8 this morning, there developed signs of . . . a collapse . . . At 11:30, there was a second serious collapse.
Bearded priests of the Russian Orthodox Church and the clergy of Moscow's few "outside" churches—Roman Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, Moslem and Buddhist —called special services to pray for the man who boasted of his atheism. The rabbis of Russia summoned their worshipers to bless the man who had so recently set in motion the scourge of antiSemitism.
In the Kremlin the elaborate medical ritual went on—every flutter of an eyelid neatly noted, every rasp of breath counted. Murder by medicine was a recognized technique in the world Stalin built and ruled; his wary survivors labored to document a thorough record of the Boss's last moments.
The "immediate family" was summoned —that apparently included son Vasily, 32, lieutenant general of the air force, and daughter Svetlana, 30. No mention was made of Stalin's third wife, Roza, sister of his longtime comrade Lazar Kaganovich. The gasping old man never awoke to say goodbye. At 9:50 o'clock that night, as a wintry wind howled past Kremlin battlements built by the Czars, he died.
Six hours later came the communiqué:
The heart of the comrade and inspired continuer of Lenin's will, the wise leader and teacher of the Communist Party and the Soviet people—Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin—has stopped beating.
Dear comrades and friends . . . The steel-like unity and monolithic unity of the ranks of the party constitutes the main condition for its strength and might. Long live the great and all-conquering teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin!
Long live our mighty Socialist Motherland!
Long live our heroic Soviet people!