"The shoe polisher is dead!"
On March 5, 1953, Joseph Stalin died. Millions of Soviet citizens mourned him—some from the heart, others from fear.
Stalin's death led to the release of many innocent people—and even saved some from death in Stalin's Gulag.
We collected evidence from contemporaries about how it was.
1. ...No, he didn't survive! Oh, joy and triumph! At last the long night over Russia will lift. Only—God forbid!—can I express my feelings: who knows how things will turn out? The headmistress sobbed as she reported the irreparable loss, the newspapers read the lamentations and cries of orphaned students and comrades... Children in schools, driven to hysterics, weep bitterly—their dear Father has died! However, all this is a lie and pretense on the part of some, the inertia of years of hammering into the consciousness of the idea of a Father, a Leader, a Great One, a Coryphaeus, a Teacher, a One and Only, a Just One—on others... Hypocrisy has become ingrained, and it's hard to break free from it.
Oleg Volkov. "Plunge into Darkness"
2. "Despite intensive oxygen and drug treatment (the announcer's voice is getting stronger!), CHEYNE-STOKES BREATHING has set in!" I see our Vasily Alekseevich, always so composed, well-mannered, and never raising his voice, suddenly jump up: "Yura," he says, "it's time to run!!" […]
"But," I say, "I thought they haven't said anything like that yet?" But Vasily Semyonich is firm and unyielding: "Yura," he repeated, drawing himself up, "I am a doctor after all! A qual-ified one!! I know what I'm talking about: Cheyne-Stokes is an exceptionally reliable guy - he's never let me down yet!"
Yuri Gastev
3. Somewhere there, in Moscow, which is already unreal to us, the bloody Idol of the century breathed its last – and this was the greatest event for the millions of its victims who were still not finished, for their loved ones and relatives, and for each individual little life.
Evgenia Ginzburg. "The Steep Route"
4. Lev Razgon recounted how, in early March 53, he and other prisoners were driving across the tundra when they suddenly saw a running figure. The man was screaming something terrifyingly. At first, Razgon and his companions thought someone was chasing the runner, but then they began to hear words like, "The mustache's dead! The shoe polisher's dead!" The figure approached, threw himself on the hood of the car, fell into the snow, jumped to his feet, and ran without stopping down the highway. The screams carried for miles across the completely empty and cold tundra...
Alexey German
5. That morning, March 5th, I woke up to my mother’s crying. “What else happened?” I jumped up. “Speak, speak quickly!” I pulled on my socks and trousers. “Stalin died.” They were broadcasting on the radio.
I sat there. Finally!.. I almost blurted out: "You should be happy, not crying, Mom!.." And then I bit my tongue. You can't offend. Somewhere she herself, I suspect, guessed that this wasn't such a loss for all of us. A tragedy. Father is in exile. We're barely hanging on. But she shed tears sparingly. Stalin—after all...
Abram Tertz. "Good Night"
6. … And here it lies on a magnificent pedestal
Among the red stars, in a shining coffin,
"The Greatest of the Greats" - Oska Stalin,
Having surpassed the fate of all Caesars.
And in front of him in a guard of honor
The people's lesser "fathers" are worth it -
Those who bent the country into a ram's horn,
More leaders, but also dead.
Georgy Ivanov. "Stanzas"
7. Moscow presented a picture of Bedlam, magnified to the size of a global city. Crowds flooded the entire center, trying to reach the House of Unions, where the tyrant's corpse was on display and from which the funeral procession was supposed to depart. The surrounding streets were transformed into Khodynka. People perished, crushed against the walls of buildings and lampposts, trampled underfoot, torn from the roofs of multi-story buildings as they tried to avoid the seething human mess below. It seemed as if the tyrant, who had fed his entire life on the vapors of suffering and blood, even from beyond the coffin was drawing mountains of victims toward him into infraspace.
Daniil Andreev. "The Rose of the World"
8. Where else does the wire from that coffin go?
No, Stalin is not dead. He considers death to be reparable.
We carried him out of the mausoleum.
But how can we remove Stalin from Stalin’s heirs?
Yevgeny Yevtushenko. "Stalin's Heirs"
