1953 in the Soviet Union

Decades:	1930s; 1940s; 1950s; 1960s; 1970s;
See also:	History of the Soviet Union; List of years in the Soviet Union;

The following lists events that happened during 1953 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Incumbents

First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union – Nikita Khrushchev (starting 14 September)
Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union – Nikolay Shvernik (until 19 March), Kliment Voroshilov (starting 19 March)
Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union – Joseph Stalin (until 5 March), Georgy Malenkov (starting 6 March)

Events

Doctors' plot

March

5 March – Joseph Stalin dies, starting a power struggle among Soviet leadership.^[1]

May

26 May – 4 August – Norilsk uprising^[2]

July

19 July – 1 August – Vorkuta uprising^[3]

August

12 August – Joe 4, the first Soviet test of a thermonuclear weapon occurs.^[4]
23 August – RDS-4 is first tested.^[5]

Births

21 January – Larisa Shoygu, politician (d. 2021)
31 January – Aron Atabek, Kazakh writer and dissident (d. 2021)
14 February – Sergey Mironov, politician
27 November – Boris Grebenshchikov, rock musician
30 December – Oleksandr Sviatotskyi, jurist

Deaths

1 January – Maksim Purkayev, Soviet general (born 1894)
13 February – Lev Mekhlis, Red Army officer (born 1889)
5 March
- Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union (born 1878)
- Sergei Prokofiev, composer (born 1891)
31 March – Ivan Lebedeff, actor (born 1895)
4 May – Nikolai Cholodny, microbiologist (died 1953)
8 November – Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin, writer (born 1870)
23 December
- Lavrentiy Beria, former leader of NKVD (born 1899)
- Vsevolod Merkulov, former Minister of State Security of the Soviet Union (born 1895)
- Bogdan Kobulov, senior member of Soviet security and police apparatus (born 1904)

References

^ "Moscow's Formal Announcement of Stalin's Death". The New York Times. 1953-03-06. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-09-30.
^ William D. Pederson, "Norilsk Uprising of 1953," Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History (Gulf Breeze, Florida: Academic International Press, 1976) Vol. 25
^ Bondaruk, Lesia (2015-10-29). "Finnish journalist's book on Vorkuta prison camp uprising". The Day (Den'). Retrieved 2019-09-06.
^ "The Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program". nuclearweaponarchive.org. Retrieved 2023-01-22.
^ Mesnyankin, Petr (July 27, 1999). "The Russian Atomic Bomb – 50 years – WebCite cache" (in Russian). Archived from the original on February 25, 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)

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[1] "Moscow's Formal Announcement of Stalin's Death". The New York Times. 1953-03-06. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-09-30.

[2] William D. Pederson, "Norilsk Uprising of 1953," Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History (Gulf Breeze, Florida: Academic International Press, 1976) Vol. 25

[3] Bondaruk, Lesia (2015-10-29). "Finnish journalist's book on Vorkuta prison camp uprising". The Day (Den'). Retrieved 2019-09-06.

[4] "The Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program". nuclearweaponarchive.org. Retrieved 2023-01-22.

[RDS-4-5] Mesnyankin, Petr (July 27, 1999). "The Russian Atomic Bomb – 50 years – WebCite cache" (in Russian). Archived from the original on February 25, 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)

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v t e Years in Russia
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v t e 1953 in Asia
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