Stalin - Joseph Stalin (Dec 18, 1878 - March 5, 1953), who obtained power of the USSR after the death of Lenin, was one of the most influential dictators of the 20th century. On March 1, 1953, after an all-night dinner with interior minister Lavrenty Beria and others, Stalin collapsed in his room, having probably suffered a stroke that paralysed the right side of his body. He died four days later, on March 5, at the age of 74. Officially, the cause of death was listed as a cerebral haemorrhage. However, it has been suggested that Stalin was assassinated. Ex-communist exile Avtorkhanov argued this point as early as 1975. The political memoirs of Vyacheslav Molotov, published in 1993, claimed that Beria had boasted to Molotov that he poisoned Stalin: 'I took him out.' In 2003, a joint group of Russian and American historians announced their view that Stalin ingested warfarin, a powerful rat poison that inhibits coagulation of the blood and so predisposes the victim to hemorrhagic stroke.