Stalin died on 5 March 1953. The ensuing succession struggle was bound up with questions of policy and ideology, and with questions regarding the restructuring the party-state and reordering state–societal relations as part of the general issue of coping with dismantling Stalin's tyrannical regime. The process of ‘de-Stalinization’ that ensued represented represented an attempt, within strictly controlled limits, to come to terms with the legacy of the Stalin era. In this power struggle, Molotov and Kaganovich, the leading figures of the Stalinist old guard, sought to re-establish their authority. But the reappraisal of the Stalin era posed serious dangers for them, which they were slow to recognize. The vozhd”s despotic rule, the regime of terror, the Gulag, all that had been considered necessary to the survival of the state were now to be reinterpreted as an incubus that had inhibited the state's development and had imposed a crippling cost on society. The developmental priorities of the regime after 1953 were driven by the task of dismantling the Stalinist regime, reorientating the state's relationship with society, and shifting the economic priorities of the regime to take greater account of consumer expectations.

Stalin's death remains shrouded in mystery. Molotov and Khrushchev both later hinted that his death was not natural. Molotov reports that Beria even claimed responsibility for the death, asserting that he had saved his colleagues by his action.