The Death of Stalin

In the USSR in 1953, Chairman of the Council of Ministers Joseph Stalin is listening to a concert on the radio and orders that a recording of it be delivered to him. The concert has to be hurriedly repeated and recorded, but the pianist, Maria Yudina, hides a note to Stalin in the sleeve of the record, saying he has ruined the country. As Stalin reads the note in his dacha, he suffers a cerebral hemorrhage and becomes paralysed. The members of the Central Committee are alerted. The first to arrive are Interior Ministry (NKVD) head Lavrentiy Beria, who discovers Yudina's note, and Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers Georgy Malenkov. As Malenkov panics, Beria encourages him to take the leadership, hoping to use him as a puppet.